High-Freq Data and DOGE Monitor - 2025-05-28

Misses in both new and continuing claims, taking them both back up to the ever-so-slightly elevated levels where they were a month ago -- but driving no change at all in the claims-implied unemployment rate. As Elon Musk prepares to leave Washington and return the private sector, cumulative DOGE job losses stand at only 1.7 thousand. That doesn't mean he utterly failed to clean house, although our sense is that he did. At the least, it means that fired federal government workers and hangers-on were able to find other employment. Some will be disappointed in him, but remember, the fear at the outset is that he would set off a recessionary wave of unemployment. That didn't happen.