Last week, an estimated 238,000 initial claims for unemployment benefits were filed, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week, according to Labor Department data released Wednesday. The latest increase brings the four-week average of initial claims to its highest level since August 2023.
Additionally, Americans are staying unemployed longer: Continuing claims, filed by people who have collected benefits for at least a week or more, have reached their highest level since November 2021.
Luke Tilley, chief economist at the Wilmington Trust, told CNN he’s been closely watching one underlying data point in the monthly jobs report: unemployed people by reason of unemployment.
“On average over three months, the number of people who lost their permanent jobs increased by about 200,000 compared to last year,” Tilley said. “And that measure of permanent job losses, year over year, is almost never positive in an expansion. It was never positive between 2010 and 2019; it was not positive between the 2001 recession and the 2008 recession.”
He added: “So when you peel back the onion of what appears to be very strong employment growth in terms of raw numbers and look at it a little bit more closely… it shows a labor market that has normalized and is at risk of collapsing.”
However, other measures of layoff activity did not show a worrying spike.
U.S.-based employers announced fewer job cuts last month than in May; however, those layoff reports are well above those of a year ago, according to data released Wednesday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
The outplacement and employment research firm counted 48,786 job cuts announced in June. That’s nearly 24 percent fewer than the 63,618 job cuts announced in May, but 19.8 percent more than the 40,709 job cuts announced in June last year.
cnn
