In each Economic Update, the Research staff analyzes recently released economic indicators and addresses what these indicators mean for REALTORS® and their clients. Today’s update discusses jobless claims.

• Initial claims for unemployment insurance for the week ending August 25 remained unchanged at 374,000 from the previous week. Meanwhile, the total number of the insured unemployed or those with continuing claims has also stabilized at about 3.3 million.
• A normal figure for first-time filers for unemployment checks would be about 350,000 per week. There are people getting laid off even in good economic times. So the recent week’s figures imply moving quite close to normal. However, as everyone knows, the job market is far from normal. A good mental visual is to think of newly unemployed filing for jobless benefits as the water flow from a faucet, with the water level of the bathtub as the total number of people without a job, including those who cannot receive unemployed checks . The flow has been trickling down closer to normal, but the water level of the unemployed still remains very high.

• According to the Department of Labor, which compiles the data, the largest increases in initial claims were in Michigan (+2,383), Florida (+1,558), Colorado (+781), South Carolina (+774), and Texas (+517), while the largest decreases were in California (-5,549), Ohio (-1,379), Oregon (-1,098), Wisconsin (-539), and Virginia (-480).