King County, Seattle, and Bellevue Real Estate Blog

After three straight declines, the number of people filing for jobless benefits rose by 12,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 472,000.  Obviously, no one was happy to see this but I'm not going to commit to anything beyond speculative fear for now.

I've been saying for some time now that the health of the real estate market will depend highly on getting the jobless ship turned around (not to mention the recovery of the economy as a whole). But, you've also likely taken notice that I talk about our real estate recovery as a generally flat to positive trend, and this for now is no different.

Check out this chart and you can see the trend plain as day (this chart ends in April which is about where we stand today):

The bottom line is that no one wants to hear jobless claims rose, but the fact of the matter is that it rose after 3 weeks of declines. I'll take a 75% clip because that forms a positive trend... give me anything below 50% and I'll worry more. Needless to say, I'm interested to see how the coming weeks and months go to make sure we avoid a double dip.

After falling considerably over the second half of 2009, first time jobless claims have hovered near 450,000 since the beginning of the year. Economists say not to expect sustained job creation until we get below 425,000 each week, so keep that number in the back of your head.