Initial claims measure firing. Continuing claims measure hiring, because the stock only falls when people leave the rolls by finding work. The two can diverge, and when initial claims are flat while continuing claims grind higher, the labour market is freezing rather than cracking.
That low-hire, low-fire pattern is common in the early stages of a slowdown and tends to show up in continuing claims and the jolts hires rate months before it appears in the unemployment-rate.
Example: initial claims hold near 220,000 while continuing claims rise from 1.80 million to 1.96 million over three months. Nobody is being fired in greater numbers, but the newly unemployed are taking noticeably longer to find work.
Related: initial-jobless-claims, unemployment-rate, jolts, leading-indicator, u6-unemployment