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The Department of Labor announced today that the 4-week moving average of initial unemployment claims was 276,000 in May. “This marks 65 consecutive weeks of initial claims below 300,000, the longest streak since 1973.”
Not bad—especially when you consider that the population of the country has increased by 50 percent since then. In fact, we missed a milestone earlier this year: adjusted for population, the number of initial unemployment claims since the beginning of 2016 has been the lowest in half a century. The economy still isn’t quite firing on all cylinders, but this is yet another sign that it’s doing pretty well.
