“The total number of Americans on unemployment benefits in all programs as of the week ended July 4 was 32.003 million,” according to the Labor Department’s release this morning. This was down about 400,000 from the prior week. New claims for the week ended July 11 were 1.3 million if “seasonally adjusted,” and 1.5 million if taken straight (up by about 100,000 from the prior week). Some 500,000 of the 1.5 million new claims were from Florida, Texas, California and Arizona.
The extra absurdity of using “seasonal adjustments” in this situation should be apparent. Two years ago you had a head cold which got much worse in this week. Now you have cancer, which progressed only slightly in this week. So your cancer, “seasonally adjusted,” regressed this week. Unadjusted, then, 32 million plus 1.5 million; plus hundreds of thousands of people still unable to get their claims processed, in some cases after months; minus new hires in the week ended July 11 (not known, but appears to be running at about 1 million/week), is the mass of unemployment. At last report (several weeks ago) another 9 million were on forced part-time work. And the big layoffs from airlines, aircraft makers, oil majors, etc. are still just ahead. So 50 million new productive jobs are needed.
