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New applications for unemployment payments dropped to 187,000 during the week ending 19 March, the smallest weekly cohort since 1969, the U.S. labor department said.
The number was 28,000 fewer than the previous week.
Economists Bloomberg surveyed had pegged the number at a median of 210,000.
Continuing claims also dipped below the 1.4-million benchmark to 1.35 million, the lowest since 1970.
“Applications should stay low as the combination of dwindling savings and decades-high inflation is raising Americans’ financial incentive to work,” Bloomberg commented.
The U.S. jobs market is “tight to an unhealthy level,” according to U.S. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, as we reported in “Fed Raises Rate, Signals More to Come” (22 Mar 2022), with millions of open jobs without enough workers to fill them and employers boosting wages to attract and keep competent help.
TRENDPOST: The Fed ignored inflation, keeping cheap money flowing until the central banksters were confident the job market had recovered.
They did that job too well.
Now competition for workers has pushed wages higher than at any time in the last 20 years (“Worker Pay Grows, But Inflation Beats It,” 1 Feb 2022), driving the economy closer to a wage-price spiral and Dragflation, our Top 2022 Trend in which the economy shrinks while prices keep rising. And as we detail in this and previous Trends Journals, one of our Top Trends for 2022, Unionization will continue to escalate.
Great Resignation Continues
And today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported more Americans quit their jobs in February, while the gap between available positions and the unemployed expanded wider.
Some 4.35 million American workers quit their jobs in February according to The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, which was up 94,000 from January.
With some 11.27 million openings last month, there is as a record 5 million more job openings than available workers… or 1.8 jobs for every person unemployed.