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Jobless claims are down, but that's not the whole picture of the labor market.

From Marketplace in Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams.

The Department of Labor released its weekly jobless claims data this morning.

226,000 people filed claims for unemployment insurance during the week that ended June 13th.

That's down 4,000 from the previous reading.

Here to talk about the latest numbers is Diane Swank,

chief economist at the audit, tax, and advisory firm, KPMG. Diane, good morning.

Morning.

I know the jobless claims number swings quite a bit, but what's pushing weekly claims down this week?

What we've seen is actually the labor market has been showing some signs of

improving. And I think, you know, the month-to-month volatility is not the important thing. The fact

that we're still at a very low fire rate is good. The undercurrent in the labor market is that

those people who have a job have a harder time finding a job and that is something

that we're a little bit worried about but we have seen some pick up in hiring and you know that is

important their initial job those claims are also we're not seeing as many layoffs right now and

that really is important too so it's been we've got quit rates that are at the

lowest level since August 2020, which tells me people are still pretty insecure about where they're

at and they don't have a lot of outside opportunities. There's not a lot of healthy churn in the labor

market. But the good news is that we're not seeing a surge in layoffs. And this is one of the

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