{"id":200514,"date":"2021-03-18T17:48:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T22:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/03\/18\/and-unemployment-goes-up\/"},"modified":"2021-03-18T17:48:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T22:48:00","slug":"and-unemployment-goes-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/03\/18\/and-unemployment-goes-up\/","title":{"rendered":"And Unemployment Goes Up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Initial jobless claims <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/weekly-jobless-claims-coronavirus-03-18-2021-11616022152?mod=hp_lead_pos2\">rose by 45,000 to 770,000 last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Not good news:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">Worker filings for jobless benefits are hovering near the pandemic\u2019s lowest levels, adding to evidence of recent economic improvement. <\/p>\n<p>Jobless claims <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dol.gov\/ui\/data.pdf\">rose last week to 770,000<\/a>\u2014still elevated above the pre-pandemic peak of 695,000\u2014but have declined since January. The four-week moving average, which smooths out weekly volatility, fell last week to about 746,000, near November\u2019s pandemic low. <\/p>\n<p>An increase in Texas accounted for about half of last week\u2019s overall rise in jobless claims, which could reflect delayed effects from last month\u2019s winter storm, some economists said. <\/p>\n<p>More broadly, declining jobless claims are one sign of economic improvement. U.S. employers added 379,000 jobs in February, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 6.2%. The U.S. manufacturing industry has exhibited <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/u-s-manufacturing-growth-continued-early-in-2021-11612201795?mod=article_inline\">steady signs of expansion<\/a>. JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co.\u2019s tracker of credit- and debit-card transactions showed consumer spending climbed in early March.<\/p>\n<p>Economists expect widespread distribution of vaccines and a fresh round of government stimulus to fuel growth in the first half of this year.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>They are predicting that economic growth this year will be about 6.5% in the US, largely because of government stimulus.<\/p>\n<p>Me, I&#8217;ll take the under, but the fact that people are lauding fiscal stimulus, as opposed to waiting for monetary stimulus to <i>eventually<\/i> do its thing, is a nice change in the conventional wisdom.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Initial jobless claims rose by 45,000 to 770,000 last week. Not good news: Worker filings for jobless benefits are hovering near the pandemic\u2019s lowest levels, adding to evidence of recent economic improvement. Jobless claims rose last week to 770,000\u2014still elevated above the pre-pandemic peak of 695,000\u2014but have declined since January. The four-week moving average, which &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[975,1089,992],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment","category-recession","category-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}