Katrina's Effect on Jobless Claims vs. Sandy

Before Sandy hit I mentioned that jobless claims would be one of the more sensitive economic indicators to any disruption caused by the storm.  Checking back in, today we found out that jobless claims spiked 78,000 following the storm to 439,000.  In 2005, claims rose by 96,000 after Katrina hit and it took six weeks for claims to fall back to their previous level.

Can Sandy Boost GDP?

There seems to be some debate about how much Sandy will affect the economy.  Some think that it will provide a real boost to GDP; others are skeptical.  While it's not possible to know for certain how much will be spent specifically to rebuild from Sandy, loss estimates can help us back into an estimate of how much of a boost the storm could provide to economic activity.  If you assume that the amount of money spent to repair damages is exactly equal to the amount of economic losses, then it's pretty easy to calculate how much that would boost GDP.

Right now the estimate from insurance catastrophe modeling firm Eqecat is that Sandy caused $10-$20B worth of economic damage.  Unfortunately $20B is a small number relative to $15T in GDP--it's only 0.13%.  Even if you assume that the spending will be double or triple the losses, the amount as a percentage of GDP is relatively small.

Source: Arithmetic