Brad Delong beats me to a little bit of analysis I was planning for today.
It looks like New Claims has to hit the 400K or so range before we can expect payroll growth. We always want to keep in mind that even during the Great Depression new businesses started every day. The entire economy looses jobs not because people are getting laid off but because so many people are getting laid off that new job creation can’t keep up.
There are recent arguments that more and more of the fluctuation is in new job creation rather than the loss of old jobs but I want to look into that more carefully before commenting on it.
Still, I hope to get to a few new charts today and tomorrow looking at New Claims and overall growth as well as New Claims and the Unemployment Rate. New Claims are our most frequent data series and our best forecaster, so it pays to nail down some of those relationships.
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