By George Hammond, EBRC director and Eller research professor
Arizona initial claims for regular unemployment insurance fell to 6,921 for the week ended December 12. Initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Insurance rose slightly to 1,622.
According to the Arizona Department of Employment Security, they have paid out $12.5 billion in UI benefits (state and federal) from early March through December 12. The state UI Trust Fund Balance was $90.5 million.
National initial claims for regular unemployment insurance fell to 935,138 for the week ended December 12. Initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Insurance rose to 455,037.
The U.S. hotel occupancy rate rose slightly for the week ended December 12, to 37.8%. That was 37.3% below last year.
U.S. movie box office sales fell to $7.9 million for the week ended December 17. That was 93.7% below last year. There were 33 movie releases last week.
TSA traveler throughput recovered modestly for the week ended December 19, to 5.8 million passengers. That was still about one-third of normal traffic.
Seated diners at restaurants using the OpenTable app remained weak for the week ended December 19. Diners were down over the year by 67.0%, 41.7%, and 54.7% for the U.S., Arizona, and Phoenix, respectively.
Travel to work and to retail and recreation places remained weak for the week ended December 12. Travel to retail and recreation places was down from January by 20.0%, 19.1%, 19.1%, and 22.0% for the U.S. Arizona, Maricopa, and Pima counties, respectively.
Arizona new business applications bounced up for the week ended December 12 to 590. That was 59.5% above last year and pulled the 52-week average up by 11.8% over the year.
View Charts of Weekly Indicators
Note: Note: Official initial claims data for Arizona are released every Thursday morning covering the week ending on the previous Saturday. Beginning with data for the week ended July 25, 2020, initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance in Arizona displayed below are published by the U.S. Department of Labor and reflect an effort to exclude claims that are obviously fraudulent.
Note: The official Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance numbers for the U.S. are released every Thursday morning covering the week ending on the previous Saturday.
Note: Weekly movie ticket sales and number of releases are published on Thursdays covering the previous week beginning on Friday.
