Unemployment claims running at 26 Million per year rate?

[vinoveri]

Does anyone have a good understanding of what "first time jobless claims" mean relative to overall unemployment?

If 500k folks file an initial claim each week, 52 weeks in a year, that makes 26 million claims - so even assuming these folks get a job in the next few months, this still seems to say that folks are losing jobs at a rate of 26 million per year - and that is 1 in 5 or so of the labor force. I had no idea turnover was that high.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...Er4&refer=home

[zoog]

Re: Unemployment claims running at 26 Million per year rate?

Easy tiger, 516,000 is the estimated annual cumulative number, not weekly.:eek:


You can run a table with this link to see initial unemployment claims vs continuing claims.

For example as of the week of 10/18/2008, Initial Claims non-seasonally-adjusted was 416,111, and Continued Claims non-seasonally-adjusted was 3,233,118.

[vinoveri]

Re: Unemployment claims running at 26 Million per year rate?

Easy tiger, 516,000 is the estimated annual cumulative number, not weekly.:eek:


You can run a table with this link to see initial unemployment claims vs continuing claims.

For example as of the week of 10/18/2008, Initial Claims non-seasonally-adjusted was 416,111, and Continued Claims non-seasonally-adjusted was 3,233,118.

that's good. thanks zoog. suspected I had to be misinterpretting.