South By North Strategies, Ltd.

NC Unemployment Claims: Week Of 4/21/12

For the benefit week ending on April 21, 2012,  some 9,504 North Carolinians filed initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits and 100,017 individuals applied for state-funded continuing benefits. Compared to the prior week, there were fewer initial and fewer continuing claims. These figures come from data released by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Averaging new and continuing claims over a four-week period — a process that helps adjust for seasonal fluctuations and better illustrates trends — shows that an average of 10,720 initial claims were filed over the previous four weeks, along with an average of 103,232 continuing claims. Compared to the previous four-week period, the average number of initial claims was lower, and the average number of continuing claims was lower.

One year ago, the four-week average for initial claims stood at 12,596,  and the four-week average of continuing claims equaled 114,339.

In recent weeks covered employment has increased and now exceeds the level recorded a year ago (3.76 million versus 3.71 million). Nevertheless, there are still fewer covered workers than there were in January 2008, which means that payrolls are smaller today than they were over four years ago.

The graph shows the changes in unemployment insurance claims measured as a share of covered employment in North Carolina since the recession’s start in December 2007. 

Both new and continuing claims appear to have peaked for this cycle, and the four-week averages of new and continuing claims have fallen considerably.  Yet continuing claims remain at an elevated level, which suggests that unemployed individuals are finding it difficult to find new positions.

Finance As A Driver Of Inequality

In the video presentation below, James Galbraith of the University of Texas at Austins argues that changes in financial regimes have helped to drive increases in inequality.

Around The Dial – May 10, 2012

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• The News & Record reports on the growth in manufacturing employment.
• National Public Radio reports on the employment prospects of college graduates.
• Simon Johnson call for “breaking up four big banks.”
• Robert Reich says the election should be about what happens in America’s boardrooms.

Job Openings In March 2012

From the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of the March version of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) …

… Though there has been steady improvement in the last two-and-a-half years in the odds of finding a job, the odds are still stacked against job seekers. Furthermore, there is no major sector in which the odds for job seekers are strong. The number of unemployed workers outnumbers job openings across the board, underscoring that the main issue in the labor market is a broad-based lack of demand for workers, not workers being in the wrong sectors or having the wrong skills.
…
The increased job openings did not translate into increased hires in March, as hires dropped slightly by 88,000 as compared with the previous month. Looking at the data over time, however, hires nevertheless are on a slow upward climb, up 18.4 percent since the official start of the recovery in June 2009. But hiring still has a long way to go before it is back to healthy levels. For example, hiring is still 16.1 percent below its 2007 average.

Understanding Financial Instability

A mini-documentary produced by the Institute for New Economic Thinking explores the sources of modern financial inability and explains how traditional economic models limit understanding of those causes.