Why don’t I talk about continuing claims for unemployment? The short answer is that to my knowledge they don’t have any forecasting ability. As I continue to look at the data I might find some connection between continuing claims and some other economic variable or interest.
I suspect, though I have not found, a connection between continuing claims and how people feel about the economy. If and when any of those links are confirmed I’ll start reporting it. Until then its just extraneous data and we already have more data than we can fully analyze.
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Friday ~ July 10th, 2009 at 12:24 am
Jeff
You have noted, as I did, that continuing claims are important as an indicator of personal distress, but not for economic forecasting.
My impression is that some pundits with a consistently bearish persuasion were happy with initial claims until the peak. Then they picked up the continuing claims and also the duration indicator. Neither has much to do with helping us spot a turn – -when and if.