If unemployment insurance claims are any sign, the labor market is going to be smoking hot when President-Elect Trump is sworn in later this month.
New claims for unemployment benefits rose to 247,000 in the first week of 2017, the Department of Labor reported Thursday morning, after dropping to near the lowest level in four decades the previous week.
The number of jobless claims was slightly below the projections of private-sector forecasters, which were for around 255,000, adjusted for seasonal variations.
Lower claims are viewed as a positive sign, because if fewer people are applying for benefits at state unemployment agencies, that suggests that layoffs are rare.
In recent weeks, claims have been running extremely low. Last week’s count, a revised 237,000 was a level not seen before 2016 since 1973.
Economists reckon that any claims number below 300,000 indicates that the jobs recovery is still in force. Over the past month, new claims have averaged 256,500, and they haven’t hit 300,000 in 97 weeks. That’s the longest streak since 1970, when the workforce was much smaller.
The background is that job growth remains strong enough to keep cutting into the ranks of unemployment. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate, at 4.7 percent in December, is already low enough that officials at the Federal Reserve think it cannot sustainably go much lower.
