ShareEach day the Research staff takes a look at recently released economic indicators, addressing what these indicators mean for REALTORS® and their clients. Today’s update highlights jobless claims.
- New jobless claims continue stubbornly trending above the level needed for improvement in the job market. Today’s report on new weekly jobless claims shows a very small decrease in new claims from the week before, to end at 428,000. The 4-week average is similarly at 426,750, which is not much different than the same time a month ago.
- The comparison of the four-week average for June over May’s numbers does show an improvement of 14,000 claims . Continuing claims have also been improving, albeit at a slow rate, and are down 12,000 for the week of June 18 to 3.702 million. There had been 1.31 million net new job additions in the past 12 months to April.
- Assuming that jobless claims continue to trend down, NAR expects about 1.5 to 2 million net new jobs in the next 12 months. If claims remain stubbornly above 400,000 for much longer, then only 1 to 1.5 million jobs will be created on net.