Thread by @aaronsojourner

898K Americans filed new regular state + PUA claims for unemployment insurance in the week ending 3/20, down 13% from prior week.

Tho this is still a very high level historically, it's the lowest since 51 weeks ago when we experienced a record-smashing claims spike to 3.3m.

The share of adults employed is lifting off & workers' expectations about the labor market continues its rapid improvement, per new evidence @uscensusbureau #householdpulsesurvey.

https://twitter.com/aaronsojourner/status/1374910160011935746

The rise in employed share over the last month is corroborated in Bick & Blandin's quasi-CPS.

https://twitter.com/aaronsojourner/status/1372997617278275584

This all makes sense given rising vaccination rates & the big federal #ARP relief & recovery measures coming online & the fed signaling commitment to its full employment mandate.

All of this signals a strong March #JobsReport, in a week and a half.

But we are still deep in the hole & have a long way to go.

A year ago today.

https://twitter.com/hshierholz/status/1242925603713617920?s=19

Further evidence on a strengthening labor market comes @uscensus #smallbusinesspulse survey.

The share of small bizs increasing employment is edging up and the share decreasing is edging down.

The share of small bizs' decreasing total employee hours (red) collapsed from 18% to 11% over the last month. The share increasing hours (blue) is edging up.

The share of small bizs saying they don't have any employees physically coming to work fell from 20% to 18% over the last month.

Not huge but not nothing & moving in the same direction as other signals.

Taking the 0.5 pp rise in the employed share from the Census HPS literally would imply a 1.25 million increase in the number of Americans employed, growth we haven't seen in last half year.