New UI claims continue to move laterally
Data signals lack of labor market separations and good news for area workers
Great news - my newsletter has a monthly report now. See the below attachment for the first issue. This is meant to be a summary of what subscribers see, and is mainly intended as a public service/recruitment tool for new subscribers. I am approaching 200 subscribers now and I am excited to see what the future holds. Thanks to you all for your continued support and readership!
These days, a common theme in the labor market data is an almost complete absence of “bad news”. Aside from sluggish wage growth (which is actually a pretty big deal; see the details here), unemployment rates remain low and job growth is solid. See the chart below which presents the unemployment rate for the Inland Empire metro area since 2020 (Source: BLS).
Initial unemployment insurance claims, which are my go-to indicator of present labor market conditions, are consistent with the “no bad news” labor market situation. Claims go up when people are fired and can’t find new work, and the fact that we’ve seen very little increase in this indicator of the last year is very good news.
The trends I have identified are consistent across other areas of Southern California. See the chart above for Riverside County – but San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and San Diego all present very similar statistics (Source: CA EDD).