Jobless Claims in the US Remain Below 200,000 For Third Straight Week—First Time in 57 Years

Good economic news! Below 200,000! Wow! This is probably as close as it gets to full employment in the US by this measure.

Maybe AI is not a job killer as of yet.

"Jobless claims have been below 200,000 for three consecutive weeks, the first such streak in 57 years. The last time jobless claims remained this low for this long was in 1969, during the extraordinary stretch of low unemployment from 1967 through 1969. The current numbers are all the more extraordinary because the workforce is more than twice as large and the last period’s labor numbers benefited from a military draft to support the Vietnam War.

The four-week moving average of claims fell to 198,750. Because claims can be volatile, many economists think this number is a better guide to the health of the labor market. The four-week average was last this low for two weeks in 2022. Prior to that, it had not been that low since 1969, when it hit an all-time low of 179,000. ..."

Jobless Claims Remain Below 200,000 For Third Straight Week—First Time in 57 Years "The number of new claims for unemployment benefits remained near a historical low last week, indicating few Americans are losing their jobs to layoffs."

Y-axis is log scale (because of the huge, distorting spike in 2020, grey shading indicates recession)