US jobless claims post second weekly decline

Last week, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell for the second straight week as the labor market conditions tightened. Last week was the 143rd consecutive week that claims were totaled under the 300,000 threshold, demonstrating the strong labor market. However, this lower rate in claims is due in part to the fact that claims-taking procedures in the Caribbean have been disrupted after the destruction of infrastructure following Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Despite this disruption, the labor market is operating at near full employment, with the unemployment rate at 4.1 percent, a seventeen year low. While most would agree that a low unemployment rate is a good thing, there are potential problems with it as low as it currently is. 2017 saw 1.5 million jobs added to the employment sector. While it seems illogical that a low unemployment rate could cause problems, the main factor that comes into question is productivity. Eventually, the labor market will reach a point where each job added does not create enough productivity to cover its cost, making any additional jobs after inefficient. This allows the output gap to grow. While a perfect economy could operate at full capacity with no output gap, the United States' rises and falls as the economy does. When there is a positive output gap, the market is overusing resources and becoming inefficient, and this occurs when the unemployment rate is low. Overall, however, it is beneficial and promising that the United States is operating in near full employment.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/30/us-weekly-jobless-claims-nov-25-2017.html