{"id":1726,"date":"2020-05-07T13:27:14","date_gmt":"2020-05-07T17:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/?p=1726"},"modified":"2020-05-07T13:27:14","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T17:27:14","slug":"weekly-jobless-claims-and-1st-quarter-productivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/?p=1726","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Jobless Claims and 1st Quarter Productivity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

KEY DATA:<\/strong>  Claims: 3.2 million\/ Productivity: -2.5%;\nOutput: -6.2%; Labor Costs: +4.8%<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IN A\nNUTSHELL:<\/strong>  \u201cThe stubbornly high number of new\nunemployment claims points to an unemployment rate that is nowhere near\npeaking.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WHAT IT\nMEANS:<\/strong>  We knew it was bad out there but it is\nlooking like it is even worse that we thought. For the week ending May 2nd<\/sup>,\nnew claims for unemployment insurance came in above 3 million once again.  It had been expected that the number of\nlayoffs would start tailing off fairly rapidly, but that doesn\u2019t seem to be the\ncase.<\/em><\/strong>  Yes they are going down,\nbut this was the seventh consecutive week that the level exceeded the three\nmillion mark.  Over that period of time,\n33.5 million workers have filed for assistance. \nUsing the March labor force level, that translates into 20.6% of the\nworkforce.  Given the sluggish nature of the\ndecline in claims and growing number of layoffs in government, health care and\nlarger companies who have tried to hold on, the unemployment rate could be\nheaded toward 25%. <\/em><\/strong> That is not\nlikely to be the number in the April report, but we could get there in the May\nor June.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you shut down operations but don\u2019t cut workers as quickly, it tends to have a really negative impact on productivity and that was indeed the case in the first quarter.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 Output was off significantly, despite the shutdowns not starting in earnest until the middle of March.\u00a0 But layoffs lagged initially, so output per worker dropped sharply.\u00a0 Meanwhile, compensation continued to rise.\u00a0 The combination of lower productivity and higher wages is not something businesses like to see as it leads to surging labor costs, which is precisely what happened.\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

IMPLICATIONS:We are close to halfway through the second quarter and while there has been some reopening of businesses, layoffs are continuing at an extraordinary pace.I thought unemployment claims might peak at 35 million,<\/em><\/strong> but that outcome looks to have the same probability as my winning the lottery.\u00a0 Now I am wondering if we will hit 40 million, which would take us to an unemployment rate of 25% or more.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 That is truly scary, as you have to go back to the early 1930s, during the Great Depression, to see anything nearly like that.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 I don\u2019t see getting up there, but I cannot rule it out. \u00a0The level of unemployment is important for many reasons, one of them being it can affect the speed at which businesses will rehire their workers once they get the green light.\u00a0 Expected demand will be the driving force and you can assume managers to hire cautiously, at least initially.\u00a0 The last thing they want to do is pay unnecessary labor costs<\/em><\/strong>, which would happen if they have too many workers.\u00a0 They can always bring workers more on<\/em><\/strong> but firing people after a short time could have devastating impacts.\u00a0 Consequently, the logical strategy is to rehire slowly.\u00a0 That means there will be enormous numbers of people remaining on unemployment and that implies demand will grow slowly.But the slower the growth rate, the longer it takes to whittle down the unemployment rate and a high unemployment rate keeps managers from hiring robustly.\u00a0 That sounds like a vicious cycle<\/em><\/strong> to me that could take an extended period to break.\u00a0 It might not be the best strategy to buy into the idea that the peak unemployment rate doesn\u2019t matter because once firms reopen, they will hire everyone back.\u00a0 That is not likely to be the case.\u00a0 So the higher the peak rate, the longer it will take to get back to even moderate rates of unemployment and the slower the recovery.\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KEY DATA:  Claims: 3.2 million\/ Productivity: -2.5%; Output: -6.2%; Labor Costs: +4.8% IN A NUTSHELL:  \u201cThe stubbornly high number of new unemployment claims points to an unemployment rate that is nowhere near peaking.\u201d WHAT IT MEANS:  We knew it was bad out there but it is looking like it is even worse that we thought. … Continue reading Weekly Jobless Claims and 1st Quarter Productivity<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1727,"href":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1726\/revisions\/1727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naroffeconomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}