Initial Jobless Claims for the past week are out this Thursday morning, with an encouraging downward slope continuing over the past several weeks: 709K was lower than analysts were thinking, and down considerably from the upwardly-revised 757K the previous week. Consider we were still tallying over a million new jobless claims a week back in the last week of August; aside from a couple outliers over the course of the past 12 weeks, we’ve been consistently lower each week.
Continuing Claims shed the 7-handle for the first time since the pandemic manifested itself in the labor market, reaching 6.79 million claims, a big drop from the previous week’s downwardly-revised 7.22 million. Since the week after Labor Day, longer-term jobless claims have ramped down steadily, and from much-higher levels: for the week of September 13, we were still seeing 12.75 million continuing claims in the American workforce.
One caveat here is the extended relief unemployment program, put into place once the pandemic hit by Congress, which rose 159K in this latest read. From this perspective, our orderly normal jobless claims reads are leaning on this crutch of extended benefits.
But what happens to jobless numbers once this program expires? Especially considering Congress is experiencing relative dysfunction in what most believe to be the presidential transition period between Presidents Trump and Biden. How will these jobless claims numbers react without an additional pandemic program any longer?
Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers for October came in unchanged, down from the +0.2% expected, and the +0.4% reported for September. This is the case for the headline figure as well as ex-food and energy, or the “core” read. Year over year, CPI is a tepid +1.2%, +1.6% on core — both of which are around 10 basis points lower than expectations. Considering how much incentive there is in the economy currently for advancements in borrowing and spending — from the Fed especially, which has been begging the economy to welcome a level of inflation — “unched” cannot be considered a ringing success. Producer Price Index (PPI) numbers for October are out tomorrow.
Markets yesterday had been muting the effect of value stock-buying in what appeared like a recalibration of market gains. However, this sentiment continues into the early market today — the Dow, in particular, looks to be down almost 200 points ahead of the opening bell. That said, we are off pre-market session lows, which were before jobs data and CPI were released, so perhaps we’ll continue in the right direction. Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaks this morning, right around market-open.
Image: Bigstock
Initial Jobless Claims Continue to Fall
Initial Jobless Claims for the past week are out this Thursday morning, with an encouraging downward slope continuing over the past several weeks: 709K was lower than analysts were thinking, and down considerably from the upwardly-revised 757K the previous week. Consider we were still tallying over a million new jobless claims a week back in the last week of August; aside from a couple outliers over the course of the past 12 weeks, we’ve been consistently lower each week.
Continuing Claims shed the 7-handle for the first time since the pandemic manifested itself in the labor market, reaching 6.79 million claims, a big drop from the previous week’s downwardly-revised 7.22 million. Since the week after Labor Day, longer-term jobless claims have ramped down steadily, and from much-higher levels: for the week of September 13, we were still seeing 12.75 million continuing claims in the American workforce.
One caveat here is the extended relief unemployment program, put into place once the pandemic hit by Congress, which rose 159K in this latest read. From this perspective, our orderly normal jobless claims reads are leaning on this crutch of extended benefits.
But what happens to jobless numbers once this program expires? Especially considering Congress is experiencing relative dysfunction in what most believe to be the presidential transition period between Presidents Trump and Biden. How will these jobless claims numbers react without an additional pandemic program any longer?
Consumer Price Index (CPI) numbers for October came in unchanged, down from the +0.2% expected, and the +0.4% reported for September. This is the case for the headline figure as well as ex-food and energy, or the “core” read. Year over year, CPI is a tepid +1.2%, +1.6% on core — both of which are around 10 basis points lower than expectations. Considering how much incentive there is in the economy currently for advancements in borrowing and spending — from the Fed especially, which has been begging the economy to welcome a level of inflation — “unched” cannot be considered a ringing success. Producer Price Index (PPI) numbers for October are out tomorrow.
Markets yesterday had been muting the effect of value stock-buying in what appeared like a recalibration of market gains. However, this sentiment continues into the early market today — the Dow, in particular, looks to be down almost 200 points ahead of the opening bell. That said, we are off pre-market session lows, which were before jobs data and CPI were released, so perhaps we’ll continue in the right direction. Fed Chair Jerome Powell speaks this morning, right around market-open.