MADISON AUMENT:
For 91.9 KVCR News, I'm Madison Aument, and this is “Economics IE.”
Normally, I do a monthly segment after the federal jobs report drops, but the government shutdown meant we didn't get those numbers for the past few months. My guest, Daniel McDonald, is an economics professor at Cal State San Bernardino. In a recent post to his Substack, Inland Empire Economic Intelligence, he used a different data set to gauge how the IE’s job market is faring. McDonald joins me today to discuss his findings.
There was no federal data during the government shutdown, but there are other ways we can look at unemployment. So where did you find data, right?
DANIEL MCDONALD:
So yeah, first of all, you can't necessarily find data on new jobs created, but you can find data on unemployment, and that data is housed at California's Employment Development Department. They're classified as the new unemployment insurance claims data, and they're basically a way of understanding whether people are applying for unemployment insurance and to try to count up how many of those people exist. And those data are reported weekly, and they're reported with a much faster turnaround than federal data.
AUMENT:
So how can we view this unemployment insurance claim data versus what we would have gotten with the federal data?
MCDONALD:
So first of all, new unemployment insurance claims data have several real advantages over federal data, say, from the BLS. For one, turning points in the labor market appear in unemployment insurance claims data first. So we're getting data that are coming out more quickly and at a higher frequency than we get with the BLS.
For example, back in summer of 2024, there were some mild recession fears floating around. But when we looked at UI claims information — unemployment insurance claims information — there was no acceleration in the number of people who are filing for unemployment insurance, which suggested that we should remain calm. And in hindsight, that was the correct response, because we didn't have a recession in summer 2024.
AUMENT:
So you looked at data from October, November, correct, when the government was shut down. What did you glean from the unemployment insurance data?
MCDONALD:
No big news, no surprises, nothing of any major concern. So what we found is that in October and November, the labor market remained relatively steady. It didn't show any major turnarounds that were suggesting that we might be feeling some negative effects from the federal policies or from tariffs. And overall, it just showed us that we were still kind of, you know, the boat was remaining on course, and there were no major hiccups.
One drawback of unemployment insurance claims data is that they are seasonal. So basically, when you have the post-holiday turnaround in the labor market, particularly in retail or even logistics, some sectors go through seasonality trends more than others. But a way to address that, even, is to look at year-over-year changes.
So even though we might see right now that new unemployment insurance claims are declining because the winter hiring season is ramping up, what we can do is compare October and November of 2025 to October and November of 2024. And what we found there was similar, promising results — no major increases year over year in those statistics. So that was just additional evidence that things aren't looking any different this year than they did last year. And so we were basically staying on course.
AUMENT:
And with the real estate market, what is that showing right now?
MCDONALD:
So the real estate market is showing a decline. Housing prices are down year over year, and that is something that, again, is indirect evidence that the economy might be experiencing some slowdown. But it could be due to other factors as well. Right now, high interest rates continue to constrain households. As of right now, the real estate market has shown some signs of weakness.
AUMENT:
Thanks for listening to “Econ IE.” Support for this segment comes from the Nowak family. You can find this segment and others at kvcrnews.org/econIE. For KVCR News, I'm Madison Aument.
