2,981,000 additional unemployment claims for the week ending May 9th.

This month's total brings the aggregate claims during the #COVID19 crisis to 36.5 million - an eye-watering 28.3% of total private sector jobs prior to the crisis (although BLS data implies that some 1.5 to 2 million were likely state and local government furloughs).

Continuing claims (going back to May 2, because they must continue from the prior measuring point) only rose by half a million (only?) to 22.8 million. There may be some impact here from firms that took PPP funding putting people back on payroll, but too soon to say.

On an unadjusted basis, states reporting week-over-week increases in unemployment claims were FL and GA (both reopening btw), NY (by small %), SD, WA (Boeing?) and WI (very small).

And Connecticut reported massive jump to 298,680 from 36,138 the week prior. Not sure where that is coming from.

Overall, we are seeing the slowing of new layoffs and furloughs - but for the very sad reason that employers are running out of people to fire, not because of any economic improvement. >>

>>The BLS date for April showed that 88% of the unemployment was coming from the ranks of production and non-supervisory workers. It that is so through the latest data, just over 30% of production and non-supervisory workers are now unemployed.

Still, we are likely nearing peak unemployment (for what that's worth with these nosebleed numbers) and we will hopefully see the continuing claims to aggregate claims delta grow over time. Perhaps, as I noted above, the PPP is helping some.