As a matter of fact, to find claims similar to the recent trend, just slightly more than 200k, you have to look back to the last sustained period when the Unemployment Rate was 4% and lower, back in the late 1960s.


Source: Bloomberg


There’s a nice symmetry to that, a jobless rate at 4.0% or lower and voila!...Weekly Claims in the vicinity of 200k. During the stretch from 1967 through to 1969, that is exactly what happened, with claims averaging 208k; closer than this to the recent experience.


SIMPLICITY ITSELF!


Source: Bloomberg


Well, not quite! There is something that makes the symmetry of these statistics over time, a bit difficult to believe. The problem I have is that the labour force in 2023 is more than double the size it was at the end of 1969; 167.9 million now vs 81.6 million then. How can a 4.0% jobless rate for those two periods deliver 210k-ish weekly claims on both occasions when there is a difference of 86 million people who are working or looking for work? I need a different calculator to make that mathematics work.


Source: Bloomberg


20 | ADMISI - The Ghost In The Machine | Q1 Edition 2024


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