Via Econbrowser, the Labor Department's latest report on unemployment claims:
[Black line: seasonally adjusted new claims for unemployment insurance, weekly since January. Blue line: average of 4 most recent weeks as of each date.]
James Hamilton notes that in the last five recessions, recovery generally began within eight weeks of unemployment claims declining from their peak. His commenters note that our current experience is pretty different from other post-War recessions, and that the bankruptcies of Chrysler and G.M. are likely to add to those numbers. That said, you'd rather see unemployment claims going down than going up.
On a related note, this article posits that there are 3 million jobs unfilled in the United States because it's difficult to find workers who are trained for certain skill sets, people don't want to move (one more reason to de-emphasize homeownership), and folks are reluctant to take a new job that pays lower than their old one. Indeed, one labor source in the piece suggests that employers might be making this argument as an excuse to pay workers less. I'm not so familiar with this issue, but it does seem clear that the U.S. does have a retraining problem that some smart policy incentives could help correct.
-- Tim Fernholz
