Jobless Claims Remains Deader Than Joe Biden's 'Uncle Bosey'
In the real world labor market, 2024 has been a shitshow of layoffs...
1. Everybuddy: 100% of workforce
2. Wisense: 100% of workforce
3. CodeSee: 100% of workforce
4. Twig: 100% of workforce
5. Twitch: 35% of workforce
6. Roomba: 31% of workforce
7. Bumble: 30% of workforce
8. Farfetch: 25% of workforce
9. Away: 25% of workforce
10. Hasbro: 20% of workforce
11. LA Times: 20% of workforce
12. Wint Wealth: 20% of workforce
13. Finder: 17% of workforce
14. Spotify: 17% of workforce
15. Buzzfeed: 16% of workforce
16. Levi's: 15% of workforce
17. Xerox: 15% of workforce
18. Qualtrics: 14% of workforce
19. Wayfair: 13% of workforce
20. Duolingo: 10% of workforce
21. Rivian: 10% of workforce
22. Washington Post: 10% of workforce
23. Snap: 10% of workforce
24. eBay: 9% of workforce
25. Sony Interactive: 8% of workforce
26. Expedia: 8% of workforce
27. Business Insider: 8% of workforce
28. Instacart: 7% of workforce
29. Paypal: 7% of workforce
30. Okta: 7% of workforce
31. Charles Schwab: 6% of workforce
32. Docusign: 6% of workforce
33. Riskified: 6% of workforce
34. EA: 5% of workforce
35. Motional: 5% of workforce
36. Mozilla: 5% of workforce
37. Vacasa: 5% of workforce
38. CISCO: 5% of workforce
39. UPS: 2% of workforce
40. Nike: 2% of workforce
41. Blackrock: 3% of workforce
42. Paramount: 3% of workforce
43. Citigroup: 20,000 employees
44. ThyssenKrupp: 5,000 employees
45. Best Buy: 3,500 employees
46. Barry Callebaut: 2,500 employees
47. Outback Steakhouse: 1,000
48. Northrop Grumman: 1,000 employees
49. Pixar: 1,300 employees
50. Perrigo: 500 employees
51. Tesla: 10% of workforce
But, according to the government-supplied data...
The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time last week was unchanged at 212k (SA), basically flat since September of last year, and claims ticked modestly lower on an NSA basis...
Source: Bloomberg
California and Oregon saw the biggest increase in claims last week while New Jersey saw a huge decline...
The funny (and we use that term loosely) thing is that last week saw New Jersey initial claims soar higher...
Just how much of this state-by-state data is simply pure seasonals with some 'fudge' factor... Here's New Jersey showing the jump and pump in early April every year...
Jim Bianco took to X to express his disbelief also:
How is this statistically possible?
Five of the last six weeks, the exact same number.
Effectively the same number in the last 11 weeks, except for the holiday weeks (President's Day and Easter).
Consider:
The US is a $28 trillion economy. It has 160 million workers.
Initial claims for unemployment insurance are state programs, with 50 state rules, hundreds of offices, and 50 websites to file.
Weather, seasonality, holidays, and economic vibrations drive the number of people filing claims from week to week.
Yet this measure is so stable that it does not vary by even 1,000 applications a week.
Just the number of applications incorrectly filed out every week should cause it to vary more than this.
Continuing Claims remains muted (elevate but muted) at 1.812mm Americans. It is now practically unchanged since August 2023...
Source: Bloomberg
But, here's the thing... WARNs are soaring... and Challenger-Grey just announced that March saw the most job cuts (90,309) since January 2023...but government-supplied data on initial jobless claims continues to smoothly tick along near record lows...
Source: Bloomberg
Ah, Bidenomics!!
If Trump wins in November, will all this data suddenly be 'allowed' to reflect reality?