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The job market hit a milestone last week. First-time claims for unemployment insurance fell by tens of thousands, to 187,000.
That’s the lowest level since 1969, when there were about half as many people in the labor market to even get laid off in the first place.
That number could be a sign of a really, really good job market, one where layoffs are infrequent and people find new positions right after being let go… or it could mean less-good stuff is going on.
First-time jobless claims used to be a pretty good snapshot of the labor market, said Michele Evermore at the National Employment Law Project, but now
fewer people who get laid off are applying for unemployment insurance.
“It replaces so little of prior income, Evermore said. “People are better off taking some sort of terrible gig job than they are collecting unemployment.”
Fewer than 1 in 3 unemployed people are even eligible, which means those low and falling jobless claims don’t mean we have a robust and healthy labor market, said University of Michigan economist Betsey Stevenson.
Life’s pretty good if you have a job and can keep it. But?
“A low-hire-low-fire environment is particularly hard for people to enter or re-enter the labor market,” Stevenson said.
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