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.

No V-Shaped Recovery

It’s been a week or so since some states have chosen to reopen. Let’s see how that has impacted flying and restaurant traffic.

As you can see the recovery is shallow even in those states that have started to reopen. Restaurant traffic is still down 94% in those states.

Flying has started to recovery, but is still down 93% (instead of 96%) year-over-year.

Based on this data, we cannot expect a V-shaped recovery for the U.S. economy – EVEN if all states reopen.