Continuing Claims Holding at Elevated Level

The Department of Labor estimates unemployment was 13.2 percent in week ended June 20. Continuing claims still had a 1.4 million handle, indicating no hiring surge that would explain the BLS estimate of 11.1 percent unemployment. Unless millions of people not on unemployment were not working and have since returned to work. The two data sets cannot be reconciled, as the BLS uses a model, but roughly speaking, BLS is saying a net 4 million people returned to work who were not on unemployment. My sense is the DoL is far more accurate. The BLS model was criticized during normal times. I have a hard time believing current events haven't broken the model.

Dumping the BLS report, the DoL report shows improvements in the labor market, but no V-shaped recovery.