Extended Unemployment: Initial, Continued and Extended Unemployment Claims July 07 2011

Today’s jobless claims report showed a decline to both initial and continued unemployment claims as a rising trend is called into question for initial claims.

Seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment declined by a notable 14,000 to 418,000 claims from last week’s revised 432,000 claims while seasonally adjusted “continued” claims declined by 43,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 2.9%.

Since the middle of 2008 though, two federal government sponsored “extended” unemployment benefit programs (the “extended benefits” and “EUC 2008” from recent legislation) have been picking up claimants that have fallen off of the traditional unemployment benefits rolls.

Currently there are some 3.84 million people receiving federal “extended” unemployment benefits.

Taken together with the latest 3.25 million people that are currently counted as receiving traditional continued unemployment benefits, there are 7.35 million people on state and federal unemployment rolls.

ADP National Employment Report: June 2011

Today, private staffing and business services firm ADP released the latest installment of their National Employment Report indicating that the situation for private employment in the U.S. strengthened in June as private employers added 157,000 jobs in the month bringing the total employment level 1.45% above the level seen in June 2010.

Looking at the chart (click for full-screen dynamic version) showing ADP’s total private nonfarm payrolls since 2001 as well as the year-over-year and month-to-month percent change, you can see that while the job recovery had been anemic throughout most of 2010, more recently the trend had been picking up momentum.

Although the level of jobs is still far below the peak seen in late 2007 and still near the lows seen during the worst period of the "dot-com" recession, the bottom looks to be clearly defined and the trend is looking comparable to past recoveries.

Perusing the rest of the data in the ADP dataset you can see the the economy is currently showing the most growth for small to mid-sized service providing jobs with goods-producing jobs remaining near trough levels.

Look for Friday’s BLS Employment Situation Report to likely show somewhat similar trends.

ISM Non-Manufacturing Report on Business: June 2011

Today, the Institute for Supply Management released their latest Non-Manufacturing Report on Business indicating that service related economic activity continued to pull back a bit throughout June.

At 53.4 the business activity index weakened for the fourth consecutive month dropping 0.37% since May and sliding 6.64% below the level seen a year earlier.

Like the ISM Manufacturing index released earlier this month, the non-manufacturing sector respondents are raising some concern over sluggish growth:

"Business is still up, although some softening seen over last month." (Wholesale Trade)

"Orders are remaining steady, and outlook for this year is positive." (Professional, Scientific & Technical Services)

"Economic activity continues to be sluggish." (Management of Companies & Support Services)

"Have yet to see a real spark that ignites new and invigorated business — still seems lethargic and mired in recession-related preventative moves, and no one sees a real improvement ahead." (Public Administration)

"Commodities coming down in price, which should help stabilize inflation." (Retail Trade)