Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Upfina Is Looking For Higher Oil Prices In The Second Half Of 2021

As a reminder, fuel is a major input into agricultural prices, which are already elevated.

From Upfina, January 25:

This Is Why Oil Is Set To Rise In 2H 2021

Seasonally adjusted jobless claims in the week of January 16th fell from 926,000 to 900,000. Further good news is last week’s reading was revised down from 965,000. Therefore, we had a 65,000 decline from the original reading last week. We probably have about 4 to 6 weeks of data that stays slightly below 1 million before rapid improvement starts.

Non-seasonally adjusted jobless claims cratered 151,000 to 961,000 which puts them much closer to seasonally adjusted claims. As we predicted last week, PUAs skyrocketed. They increased 139,000 to 424,000. We’d argue this isn’t bad news because this is just people getting the help they needed. A few states shut out people who needed help. Within the next few weeks, PUAs should correlate with NSA claims again.

The total number of people on all benefits programs fell from 18.4 million to 15.9 million in the week of January 2nd. That decline only occurred because some pandemic benefits temporarily lapped. In the next 2 weeks, this total will rise. Continued claims in the week of January 9th fell from 5.181 million to 5.054 million which is a new cycle low. That would be a solid number if it wasn’t for the people on pandemic benefits. Instead, the labor market would be in disastrous shape if it wasn’t for help from the government. That should change within the next 2-3 months.

Real Time Population Survey

The real time population survey shows the employment rate for those ages 18-64 stayed at 68.6% in the week of January 10th to the 16th. The prime age labor force participation rate fell 4 tenths to 77.4%. The prime age unemployment rate fell 0.7% to 11.4% which is almost double the U-3 rate. Prime age workweek fell 0.1 hours to 25.5 hours....

....MUCH MORE

WTI futures $52.81 up 20 cents. 

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