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Initial Jobless Claims: US employment
By Gabriele Brambilla
Let's delve into two important data points for the health of star labor: Initial Jobless Claims and Continuing Jobless Claims
Gli indicatori sull'occupazione americana
We address the topic of US employment by discovering two important indicators on the subject: theInitial Jobless Claims and the Continuing Jobless Claims.
With these weekly updated data, it is possible to track the health of the star-studded labor market. By incorporating the results into a more comprehensive analysis, also based on other indicators, we are able to understand more accurately what direction the economy (and with it the markets) might take.
Initial Jobless Claims
In general, both Jobless Claims have great relevance to macroeconomics. As we said, these are reports published weekly (usually on Thursdays), which aim to quantify employment trends.
Specifically, the Initial Jobless Claims measures the number of people who claimed unemployment benefits for the first time in the previous week. It is a decidedly quick indicator, providing an overview of what happened in the last few days before the issue.
As we can easily guess, when the number is high it usually means that fewer people have jobs (or vice versa in the opposite case).
As investors, this information can be useful in assessing which direction the country’s economy is going. Beware of volatility, however: since these are weekly updates, particular events could bring no small amount of noise and confuse us. When in doubt, it is better to keep an eye on the average of the previous weeks as well, so as to have a more reliable figure.
Initial Jobless Claims can be monitored on portals such as Investing.com and TradingView.
Continuing Jobless Claims
Continuing Jobless Claims captures the number of unemployed people who qualify for benefits offered by unemployment insurance. In fact, these are people who have already passed from the Initial Jobless Claims and have been receiving benefits for more than a week (hence the name Continuing Jobless Claims, because it is something that is already in place and continues).
The figure is less closely followed than Initial, but it still carries some weight. If you decide to keep an eye on these indicators, we recommend following both, mark ignore one or the other.
Follow here the Continuing Jobless Claims.
More data: unemployment and employment
We should not confuse Jobless Claims with two other industry indicators: unemployment rate and employment. The latter two are in fact indicators issued monthly, which do not measure benefit-related activities.
The unemployment rate, as the name suggests, shows how many people are currently out of work, but actively looking. While employment is the exact opposite, that is, it measures who has a job.
Both data are constantly monitored and considered crucial in measuring the health of an economy, but it is unemployment that is most prominent, linked to the most important macro dynamics. In any case, these are two sides of the same coin, closely linked.
When in doubt, an investor should give proper attention to each indicator, while avoiding becoming overly fixated on a specific figure. This will provide a broad view and enable more informed and intelligent decisions to be made.
