Claims Relatively Low, Absolutely Ridiculously High

New Jobless claims were “only” 3.17 million today. That sounds great because it’s half the number 5 weeks ago. Of course, it’s **5** times the maximum number before this recession started.

In total now, there have been 33 million claims in 7 weeks. It took almost 75 weeks – 10 times longer – to hit the number of claims during the last two recessions.

Total Jobless Claims from the start of each recession

The question is now how long until claims slow down to “normal” levels and employment begins to increase again.