Category: Statistics

The Overs Win

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The US economy U.S. added 850,000 jobs in June, well over the consensus estimate of  706,000.

One fly in the ointment though, long term unemployment numbers continued to rise:

The U.S. labor market recovery is accelerating after a spring lull.

Employers added 850,000 jobs in June—the biggest gain in 10 months—and workers’ wages rose briskly, the government said Friday, both signs of robust demand for workers.

The unemployment rate, derived from a separate survey of households, rose to 5.9% last month from 5.8% in May. That was in part because of a positive development: A modest number of Americans came off the sidelines and entered the job search, expanding the labor pool. A broader measure of unemployment that takes into account workers stuck in part-time jobs and those too discouraged to look for work fell sharply last month.

Job growth lagged behind broader economic growth earlier this spring, with the economy adding 583,000 jobs in May and 269,000 in April. But big hurdles to hiring are starting to clear away. Rising vaccination rates, easing government restrictions on businesses and the expiration of unemployment benefits in many states are stoking the latest growth.

That last phrase is a bit of editorializing by the writer.  There is still no evidence that extended unemployment benefits are keeping people off of the job markets, but it’s dogma at places like the WSJ.

We are still not over the hump.

It’s Jobless Thursday

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Initial unemployment claims fellell to a post pandemic low of 364,000, which is actually down to the level of a bad week in the before time:

Worker filings for jobless benefits fell to a new pandemic low last week and resumed a monthslong downward trend, adding to signs of a recovering labor market.

Initial jobless claims fell by 51,000 to a seasonally adjusted 364,000 in the week ended June 26 from the prior week’s revised total of 415,000, the Labor Department said Thursday.

The drop brought the four-week moving average, which smooths out volatility in the weekly figures, to 392,750, also a pandemic low. Jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, are down by about 50% since the first week of April, but remain above pre-pandemic levels.

“We are seeing labor-market progress,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at job-search site Indeed. She added that “we still have just a little bit more ways to go” before unemployment claims reach pre-pandemic levels.

Initial claims were at 256,000 on March 14, 2020, as Covid-19 took hold in the U.S. The 2019 average for claims was 218,000.

Thursday’s decline in unemployment claims came ahead of the June U.S. employment report, set to be released by the Labor Department on Friday. Economists project that employers created 706,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate fell to 5.6%.

As always, I will go with the under.

Initial Jobless Claims Went Up

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Initial Unemployment Claims rose by 37,000 to 412,000, though the 4-week moving average continued its downward trajectory:

Worker filings for initial unemployment benefits rose last week for the first time since late April but remained near a pandemic low as the labor market continues to heal from the impact of Covid-19.

Initial jobless claims rose by 37,000 to 412,000 in the week ended June 12. Despite the increase, the four-week moving average, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, reached a new pandemic low of 395,000. This was the lowest average level since March 2020, when the pandemic first took hold in the U.S. 

………

Thursday’s claims report also showed unemployment rolls shrank late last month. The number of ongoing benefit claims—a proxy for those receiving payments—fell by more than 500,000 to 14.8 million the week ended May 29. That includes those tapping benefits through pandemic-specific programs introduced last year, including those for self-employed workers.

I wonder how much all the news about ‘Phant governors terminating benefits might be behind the drop in ongoing claims.

The stimulus from extended employment benefits are tapering off, and this will adversely effect the recovery.

The only question is how much this will effect the recovery.

It’s Jobless Thursday!

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Initial unemployment claims fell from fell to 376,000 from 385,000 last week, which is obviously good news, but year over year inflation jumped to 5%, which means the the usual suspects are going to start screaming for austerity.

As always, I’ll note that with 20+ states rolling back unemployment benefits, stimulus is going away sooner rather than later in those states, and in all 50 states at the end of September, so I will expect back-sliding when that happens.

As to the inflation, the core rate, which excludes food and energy is a lower at 3.8%, and it is dominated by a spike in used car prices, which are in turn driven by a massive shortage of new cars, which is in turn driven by an even more massive shortage of computer chips that go into new cars.

It’s a recovery, and inflation will spike, and quite honestly, with wages going up for people at the bottom end of the scale, it’s a good thing.

I’m waiting for the “Very Serious People” to try to start to screwing things up.

And the Unders Win

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Job growth in May was less than the consensus forecast, 559,000 as versus the consensus prediction of 671,000.

We are in a recovery, one just wonders how fast, and when the benefits will start accruing to the top 1% again.

I would note that the progress of the recovery illustrates an important point:  A world wide pandemic is less capable of doing lasting damage to our society than does business of usual in global finance:

U.S. employers boosted hiring in May, but not enough for the labor market to keep pace with an overall economy that is heating up as the pandemic continues to ease.

Payrolls grew by 559,000 last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, up from a revised 278,000 in April, which marked a sharp drop from March’s figure. The unemployment rate fell to 5.8% in May from 6.1% the prior month.

While the gains marked an uptick from April, they were lower than economists predicted and reflected businesses struggling to fill job openings as potential workers remained on the sidelines. The labor recovery has slowed from earlier in the year—in March, the economy added 785,000 jobs—a development economists say could delay a full labor recovery to well into next year.

That mixed picture cheered investors, who bet the numbers weren’t strong enough to change the Federal Reserve’s course on its easy-money policies. U.S. stocks rose, while the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury fell.

Why yes, the stock market is COMPLETELY disconnected from the well being of society, why are you asking? 

We need to stop coddling Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.

New Post Pandemic Low on Initial Unemployment Claims

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I just HAD to meme this

Jobless Claims fell to 385,000 last week.

We are not at a level that is firmly consistent with a normal recession.

I hope that the end of extended unemployment benefits in many states won’t send this backward:

Worker filings for initial jobless claims have dropped by 35% since late April, adding to signs of a healing labor market as the U.S. economy ramps up.

Weekly unemployment claims, a proxy for layoffs, fell to 385,000 last week from a revised 405,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said Thursday. Last week’s decline in claims marked the fifth straight week that new filings fell, from 590,000 the week ended April 24.

“Claims remain elevated by normal standards, but the downward trend has been relentless in recent months, and a return to the pre-Covid level over the summer seems a decent bet,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

Thursday’s reading brings the four-week average of initial claims—which smooths out volatility in the weekly figure—to 428,000, the lowest point since the pandemic began, though still well above pre-pandemic levels. Weekly claims averaged around 220,000 in the year before the pandemic.

Economists separately expect that the May employment report, set to be released Friday, will show that the economy added 671,000 jobs last month, after gaining 266,000 in April, and that the unemployment rate fell to 5.9% in May from 6.1% the prior month.

 My guess is that the jobs number will be close to the consensus, but (as always) I’ll take the under.

Another Improvement in Initial Jobless Claims

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Initial claims have fallen to a new post pandemic low of 406,000.

Better news, but not exactly good news until the number falls below 300K:

Worker filings for jobless benefits fell again to a fresh pandemic low, extending a steady downward trend and adding to signs of a healing labor market and a broader, though uneven, economic recovery.

Initial unemployment claims for regular state programs, a proxy for layoffs, fell last week to 406,000 from 444,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That level represents the lowest levels of claims since the coronavirus pandemic’s onset last year and the fourth consecutive week claims have reached a new pandemic low. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had forecast there were 425,000 new claims last week.

A separate report from the Commerce Department showed orders for cars, appliances and other long-lasting, or “durable,” goods fell a seasonally adjusted 1.3% in April from March—the first monthly decline in demand for such products in a year. The decline was concentrated in the automotive sector, where a semiconductor shortage has caused disruptions, and the defense industry, which tends to be very volatile. Shipments of motor vehicles and parts fell sharply as well, while shipments of defense capital goods rose.

………

U.S. gross domestic product, a broad measure of the economy’s output of goods and services, rose in the first quarter at an annual rate of 6.4%, unrevised from the initial estimate, according to another Commerce Department report. Consumer spending, the economy’s key driver, was revised up to an annual rate of 11.3% in the first three months of the year.

It’s clear that the first quarter numbers, while quite good, are not sustainable.  It’s a rebound from the economic contraction of the past year.

I would expect GDP growth numbers to return to trend, around 2½%.

It’s Jobless Thursday

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Last week, initial unemployment claims fell to 444,000, down 34,000 from last week.

Once again, it’s an improvement, but with the rush of the stupid states to roll back unemployment benefits, I expect the pace of improvement slow down in those states: 

The number of workers seeking and receiving unemployment benefits through state and federal programs has reached pandemic lows ahead of this summer, when 22 states plan to end a $300 federal benefit early.

Initial unemployment claims through regular state programs dropped to 444,000 last week, marking a new low level since the pandemic hit in mid-March 2020.

The number of people claiming benefits through state and pandemic-related programs also declined in the week ended May 1 to a pandemic low of 16 million people from 16.9 million a week earlier, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That includes benefits through one of several programs, including regular state aid and federal emergency programs put in place in response to the pandemic.

………

Though jobless claims are on a downward trend, April’s job gain of 266,000 fell far short of the one million economists had forecast, fueling concerns about the recovery. Republicans also are concerned that enhanced federal unemployment payments are discouraging people from seeking work.

The low job creation numbers are a fly in the ointment.

States have announced dates ranging from mid-June to mid-July for when they will stop processing pandemic-related benefits. That means nearly 3.7 million individuals could lose the $300 weekly benefits—which were set to expire in early September—beginning in mid-June, according to estimates by forecasting firm Oxford Economics.

Of those, about 1.45 million will also lose pandemic benefits for gig work, and about 1.31 million will no longer have access to extended benefits that kick in after claimants exhaust their regular state benefits.

This is the whole Brood X Cicada emergence in the ointment.

This recovery is driven by government spending, and because they fetishize being cruel, they are knocking the pins out from underneath the recovery.

Sadism as policy is never a good thing.

I Slept Through This

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For about the 5th or 6th time since I started blogging in 2007, I did not blog.I was completely wiped than evening.

So I missed commenting on Thursday’s initial unemployment claims report, which hit another pandemic low.

Jobless claims continued a several-week slide to new pandemic lows, in a sign hiring is primed to strengthen as workers return to the labor market.

Worker applications for unemployment benefits fell to 473,000 last week from a revised 507,000 a week earlier, the Labor Department said Thursday. Claims remain above pre-pandemic levels but are now at the lowest point since mid-March 2020, when the pandemic shut down the economy and triggered widespread joblessness.

The four-week moving average, which smooths out volatility in the weekly numbers, also reached a new pandemic low of 534,000.

………

Higher vaccination rates, fiscal stimulus and easing business restrictions are converging to support stronger spending across the U.S. But job growth isn’t keeping pace. U.S. employers added a modest 266,000 jobs in April, far short of the one million that economists had forecast and the weakest monthly gain since January.

Many employers say they can’t find enough workers to meet surging demand, in turn limiting production. Economists cite several factors keeping workers on the sidelines, including individuals’ fear of contracting Covid-19, child-care burdens from school closures, and expanded unemployment benefits.

Though benefits applications are on a downward trend, the number of people claiming benefits each week through regular state programs remains elevated. So-called continuing claims have stagnated between 3.6 million and 4 million since March.

I think that a recovery is underway, the questions are whether it will involve the rest of us, as the 2009 recovery did not, whether we are opening up too soon, and whether new variants of Covid-19 will take us back to lock-down.

And, It’s Under Estimates

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The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever

They were expecting a million new jobs in April. They got just 266,000, and the unemployment rate ticked up by 1%.

After some good news yesterday, we got some bad news today:

Hiring in the U.S. unexpectedly slowed in April, a sign the nation’s recovery from the pandemic still faces challenges as many businesses struggle to find workers or remain cautious about the economic outlook.

U.S. employers added a modest 266,000 jobs in April, a report Friday by the Labor Department showed, far short of the one million that economists had forecast and the weakest monthly gain since January. The deceleration came after payrolls rose a downwardly revised 770,000 in March and left total employment down by 8.2 million from its pre-pandemic level.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 6.1% in April from 6% a month earlier, partially reflecting an increase in people entering the workforce.

………

Signs of labor-market tightness also emerged in Friday’s report, aligning with many companies’ complaints that they can’t find workers to meet demand. Wages for workers rose in April as some employers appeared to lift pay to attract or retain employees. Average hourly earnings for private-sector employees rose by 21 cents to $30.17 in April. The gain is notable because strong hiring in the lower-wage hospitality sector—which occurred in April—would typically put downward pressure on average earnings.

Given that the hospitality sector is one of the most dangerous sectors from a Covid perspective, people are simply no longer willing to die for minimum wage, and this is a good thing. ™

The average workweek increased to 35 hours in April, an indication some employers added worker hours to compensate for the lack of labor.

………

Friday’s report adds to the likelihood that the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policies will remain in place in coming months, something financial markets reflected in price movements on Friday.

………

The leisure and hospitality sector, including restaurants, accounted for the bulk of employment creation in April, adding 331,000 jobs. The Labor Department said that reflected an easing of pandemic-related restrictions in many parts of the country.

Meaning that other sectors of the economy lost 60,000 jobs.   

When you undershoot your prediction by 74%, and the previous month’s jobs report was revised down by 146,000, you are not having a good jobs report.

I’ve Been Saying this for HOW Long?

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As I have been saying for a while, it has been obvious to anyone watching excess deaths data that Covid-19 deaths are at least 50% higher than reported. 

It appears that the University of Washington’s University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has come to the same conclusion, though their number is about 100% more than reported, or about 6.9 million deaths with a total world population of about 7.88 billion.

By way of comparison, the death toll from Spanish Influenza was somewhere between 20 and 50 million with a population of 1.80 billion.

A new analysis of the toll of the Covid-19 pandemic suggests 6.9 million people worldwide have died from the disease, more than twice as many people as has been officially reported, with the under reporting being highest in less developed nations.

The numbers are grim:

In the United States, the analysis estimates, 905,000 people have died of Covid since the start of the pandemic. That is about 61% higher than the current death estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 561,594. The new figure also surpasses the estimated number of U.S. deaths in the 1918 flu pandemic, which was estimated to have killed approximately 675,000 Americans.

The analysis was conducted by scientists at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

“We’re probably not yet at the global toll of Spanish flu and certainly not at the death rate from Spanish flu. But given what’s unfolding in India right now, given our expectation of continued deaths, Covid is going to rival Spanish flu at the global level in terms of the count, likely, before we see the end of this epidemic,” the institute’s director, Christopher Murray, told reporters in a briefing.

………

The estimates are of deaths directly related to Covid, and do not include deaths that resulted from the pandemic’s disruption of health care — for example, people who did not seek care for heart attacks because they were afraid to go to Covid-swamped hospitals.

You can find the study here.

It’s a lot worse than the official numbers.
 

Under 500,000!

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Initial jobless claims fell below 500,000 last week, the first time that this has happened since the pandemic:

Worker filings for unemployment benefits in the U.S. reached a new low since the Covid-19 pandemic began more than a year ago—the latest sign that the labor-market rebound is gathering force.

Jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, fell 92,000 last week to 498,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That brings the four-week average of initial claims, which smooths out volatility in weekly data, to the lowest point since the pandemic took hold, though still well above pre-pandemic levels.

………

While the number of new applications has been declining, the level of Americans receiving unemployment benefits remains elevated and businesses can’t find enough people to hire. 

I will note again, “Unable to find enough people to hire,” means, “Unwilling to pay enough for the job.”

………

This improvement will likely be captured in the Labor Department’s April employment report, which the department will release Friday. Economists forecast that the U.S. economy added one million jobs last month, compared with a gain of 916,000 in March, and project that the jobless rate ticked down to 5.8% from 6% a month earlier.

However, the pandemic’s impact was so severe that economists expect employment to close out this year 1.6% lower than in the fourth quarter of 2019, despite the swift pace of hiring they anticipate in coming months. The number of new jobless claims peaked at more than six million in the spring of 2020. After falling sharply, it then plateaued between 700,000 and 900,000 throughout the fall and winter.

I’ll go with the under, because I always go with the under.

Still, this is undeniably good news.

I See the Problem

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 Look at this graph:

It might not look like much, but it shows how our economy has been taken over  by rent seekers.

IP, which only makes money to the degree that it is subsidized through government action, has increased by a factor of 5.

Even considering the rise in software as a product, it’s clear that an increasing portion of our economy has been diverted to unproductive rent seeking.

It’s a drag on our economy, and contributes to inequality.

Unleash the Free Market

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New: This is a stunning chart.

The amount it costs to provide health care to people with employer insurance rises steadily with age.

Then, people turn 65 and go on Medicare, and the cost of health care drops precipitously.https://t.co/2HhgSvKrZr@matthew_t_rae @jcubanski pic.twitter.com/5kFiBllkj9

— Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) April 27, 2021

This graph explains how the American healthacre system is failing.

If the market worked, healthcare costs would continue to increase, but they don’t.

Referring to the linked article, here are the money quotes:

  • Average health care spending per person per month for enrollees ages 60-64 in large employer plans ($1,061) is 38% higher than average monthly spending for traditional Medicare beneficiaries ages 65-69 ($770) (Figure 1). This comparison understates the savings that could be realized by shifting 60-64 year olds to Medicare, since one would expect 65-69 year olds to have roughly 20-25% higher spending, because health needs rise with age.
  • Average monthly health care spending for large employer plan enrollees ages 60-64 is similar to that of traditional Medicare beneficiaries in their early 70s, who tend to use more health care services than people in the younger age cohort.

Poor Messaging

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Yale academics have written a study showing that Democratic Party anti-racism messaging harmed the party politically.

Obviously, some of the this can be ascribed to the racism of a portion of the electorate, but there is also the issue that anti-racism messaging has been offered as an alternative to basic issues of social justice, labor rights, and inequality.

That’s why Hillary Clinton’s, “Basket of Deplorables,” quote was so damaging.

The subtext was, “If you did not have the talent and initiative to get a post-graduate degree at an elite institution, screw you.”

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) has completely eschewed issues of socioeconomic class, because they are creatures of the top 1%, and racial reductionist statements allow them to check the various “social justice” text box while continue to serve the agenda of the economic elites.

The is the exact opposite of the answer that Jesse Jackson gave during his 1988 Presidential campaign when he was asked, “How you are going to get the support of the white steelworker?” and he replied, “By making him aware he has more in common with the black steel workers by being a worker, than with the boss by being white.”

Bernie Sanders message in 2016 and 2020 was very similar, and (thankfully) Biden appears to be governing more toward the Jackson end of the Democratic Party ideological spectrum than he is toward the Clinton/Obama side of the spectrum, even if he did not campaign that way:

Beginning about a decade ago, the Democratic Party went through two important changes related to racism. The first is that the backlash against Barack Obama made far more white liberals aware of how deeply racial resentment inspired American conservatism. (Black people had by and large realized this all along.)

The second is that the party, which in previous years had painstakingly avoided the impression its agenda was mainly designed to help minorities, began emphasizing this very point. That change occurred in 2016, when Hillary Clinton started infusing her rhetoric with conscious appeals to racial equity. And it continued in 2020 — even though Joe Biden employed less race-conscious rhetoric than his more progressive rivals, he still cast some of his plans as explicitly anti-racist.

But is it working? Yale political scientists Micah English and Josh Kalla have found that adding explicitly race-conscious ideas to Democratic messages reduces their support. English and Kalla’s experiment borrows real-world messages from Democratic politicians and tests them with both a race-conscious component and a mix of race and class messaging. In either instance, telling subjects that a proposal would reduce racial inequity makes them less likely to support it:

 

Bigotry is evil, and it needs to be fought on every level, but using anti-racist virtue signaling as an alternative to meaningful change in a profoundly dysfunctional society, ends up harming both the progressive project and the ability to fight racism, because it reduces every government action to a zero sum game where the only determinant is ethnicity.

The New York Times Catches Up With Me

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Worse than Spanish Influenza

I’ve been talking about how excess deaths is the best measure of Covid-19 mortality, (see here and here) and now the New York Times has discovered the statistical measure.

It only took them a year, though the graph surprised me.

It turns out that Covid is worse than the Spanish Influenza epidemic: 

A surge in deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic created the largest gap between the actual and expected death rate in 2020 — what epidemiologists call “excess deaths,” or deaths above normal.

Aside from fatalities directly attributed to Covid-19, some excess deaths last year were most likely undercounts of the virus or misdiagnoses, or indirectly related to the pandemic otherwise. Preliminary federal data show that overdose deaths have also surged during the pandemic.

………

In 2020, however, the United States saw the largest single-year surge in the death rate since federal statistics became available. The rate increased 16 percent from 2019, even more than the 12 percent jump during the 1918 flu pandemic.

These numbers are really f%$#ing scary.

Good Unemployment News

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In our latest edition of, “Jobless Thursday,” initial unemployment claims fell to 547,000, a pandemic low, and the first unemployment report since the shutdown that can be described as normal recession levels, as opposed to, “Disaster of biblical proportions ……… Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God ……… Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling ……… Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes ……… The dead rising from the grave ……… Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria,” levels.

So the employment outlook is now beginning to look like a recession:

Worker filings for jobless benefits declined to 547,000 last week, a new pandemic low that adds to evidence of a strengthening labor market and overall economic recovery.

Initial unemployment claims, a proxy for layoffs, fell 39,000 last week from an upwardly revised 586,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That put new claims on a seasonally adjusted basis below 600,000 for two consecutive weeks in mid-April, their lowest levels since early 2020. The four-week moving average, which smooths out volatility in the weekly figures, was 651,000, also a pandemic low.

The median sales price for previously owned homes climbed to a record high in March as a shortage of homes during the pandemic limited transactions, the National Association of Realtors said separately. Existing-home sales dropped 3.7% in March from February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.01 million, marking the second straight month of sales declines.

Jobless claims remain higher than their pre-pandemic levels—the weekly average in 2019 was about 218,000—but last week’s drop extended a downward trend since the start of this year and raised expectations for further declines in coming weeks.

I hope that the powers that be won’t take their foot off the accelerator pedal. 

The claims rate is still too damn high.

Why Welfare?

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Because if you take proper care of children growing up, they are far less likely to commit crimes later in life. (More details and numbers at the link)

Economists love to say “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. We often use it to describe the opportunity cost of scarce resources, but it is also literally true, and therefore hunger and poverty are usually positively correlated. This is because without income and work, there can be no trips to the grocer. And without ingredients, there can be no meals. And without regular meals, children eke out a level of consumption so small, they grow up malnourished and live below the biological minimum level needed for child development. Poverty, through malnourishment and stunted child development, can can make life feel hopeless, and hopelessness can make desperate choices appear best.

Andrew Barr and Alexander Smith have produced an exemplar study that plausibly shows that the Food Stamp program, by dramatically improving the development of cohorts through increased nutrition, caused a sizable decline in birth cohort crime at the onset of early adulthood. This paper adds to a growing body of research that shows early childhood interventions can have developmental ramifications so large, they may change a person’s entire life trajectory and in so doing, society itself.

………

But a separate literature explored whether childhood environments might be responsible for changing crime in adulthood. In a famous study by John Donohue and Steven Levitt, abortion legalization was suggested as at least partly responsible for the large, secular declines in crime that began in the early 1990s. But this theory was questioned and has since been more or less dropped by social scientists as an explanation for shifts in American crime rates. More promising explanations have focused on lead exposure and removal. But very little work, save a couple of small RCTs, have suggested that nutrition might be responsible for adult crime.

That has changed recently, though, in the last few years. Jill Carr and Analisa Packham, in a series of papers, present evidence that SNAP benefits can impact adult crime and domestic violence, but their work has tended to emphasize the program’s scheduling characteristics, not in utero and childhood development itself. Barr and Smith are unique in this pantheon of crime papers because of their focus on the Food Stamp Program’s nutritional benefits as opposed to the rational calculation of crime itself by adults. By providing nourishment and alleviating the sharp negative effects of poverty on the body’s development which can increase broadly defined human capital stock, something like a Food Stamp Program might reduce adult crime, not by changing the incentives adults face, but rather by changing the adult altogether.

This along with evidence of the effects of lead exposure, particularly through tetraethyl lead in gasoline, have had long term effects on crime rates. (See here, here, and here)

Spending money on policing, rather than treating making sure that children grow up with proper nutrition, healthcare and education is more than a cruelty, it is a stupidity.

Good News on Initial Jobless Claims

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Initial jobless claims have finally fallen below their pre-pandemic record.

Well, that only took 13 months: 

Unemployment claims declined to the lowest level since the coronavirus pandemic struck last spring, adding to signs the U.S. economic revival is picking up speed.

Jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, fell to 576,000 last week from 769,000 a week earlier. That is the lowest weekly figure since March 2020. Claims remain higher than the pre-pandemic levels of around 220,000, but economists expect they will continue to drop as the recovery accelerates.

“We are seeing both a strong reopening and rehiring in the economy at this time,” said Kathy Bostjancic, economist at Oxford Economics. “It’s been faster than most economists expected.”

Several factors are converging to boost growth across the economy. Vaccination rates are powering consumer spending, governments are relaxing restrictions on businesses, and federal-stimulus funds are flowing through the economy.

………

The total number of people receiving unemployment assistance is declining as the labor market heals. About 16.9 million people were collecting unemployment benefits through state and federal programs in the week ended March 27, down from 18.2 million a week earlier.
More on the Economy

The labor market still has a long way to go before achieving a full recovery. As of March, U.S. payrolls remained 8.4 million below their level in February 2020.

It’s unalloyed good news though the current situation remains pretty dire.