Friday morning’s release of initial jobless claims disappointed relative to expectations as they climbed up to 218K versus expectations for an increase to only 210K from last week’s reading of 206K. At current levels, jobless claims are rounding out 2023 in the middle of the past couple of years’ range: not as strong as the late 2022 low of 182K, but not as high as the peak earlier this year.
Before the seasonal adjustment, claims are trending higher as could be expected given the time of year. Claims jumped this week to 272.6K which is the highest level for the comparable week of the year since 2019. Based on seasonal patterns, claims tend to peak right around New Year or the first couple of weeks in January meaning that the headwinds are likely to fade soon.
Continuing claims have risen significantly since late Q3, but more recently that increase has begun to plateau right around levels from the spring peak. Currently, continuing claims stand at 1.875K, a 14K increase week over week.
In addition to weekly claims, below we show the latest data on unemployment claimant characteristics through November. As shown below, some industries that received a lot of attention for layoffs earlier this year and observed actual increases in claims, like tech, real estate, and finance, have more recently seen pivots lower in claims. Although that marks some improvements (potentially as a result of expirations of benefits), overall, those industries do not account for the largest shares of claims. Instead, industries like construction or manufacturing account for greater burdens on claims.
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