High-Frequency Post-Virus Recovery - 2023-12-06

Continuing claims beat significantly, and the claims-employed unemployment rate falls sharply. The only one of our high-frequency data sets that isn't showing a continuing boom is gasoline consumption, off almost 7% from pre-pandemic levels. But maybe this tells its own boom story -- the productivity growth powering the boom is itself powered by a post-pandemic mobility re-think in which we just don't need to move around as much to produce the same output (and more). And that, in turn, speaks volumes about sticky low oil prices in the face of record-low inventories.