This morning, ahead of the opening trading bell, new jobless claims numbers have been released, with overall good results: 712K on the Initial Jobless Claims headline number was 42K fewer than the previous week’s upwardly revised 754K. It’s also the lowest total since pandemic conditions took hold, when pre-holiday shopping employment in November saw this number down to 711K. The three-week moving average is now at a more-orderly 759K.
Continuing Claims also stayed orderly, down again to 4.144 million for the week ending February 27 (Continuing Claims reports a week in arrears) from a slightly revised 4.337 million the previous week. As we know, however, pandemic assistance takes care of those unemployed citizens who expire on longer-term jobless claims, which is why we see such an orderly downward slope on its graph. At the first of the year, we were still recording 5.2 million longer-term claims per week.
More than 10 million Americans laid off during the pandemic — most due to no fault of their own; “shelter in place” and shut-downs of entire segments of the economy claimed a large portion of these layoffs — have not yet come back into the workforce. Last week’s nonfarm payroll report, while showing a big addition to headline employment last month, also indicated in the U-6 (aka “real unemployment”) up in double digits: 11.1. In all, some 20 million Americans currently receive some manner of jobless claim.
This is also being addressed by the new American Rescue Plan, passed yesterday in the House and expected to be signed by President Biden tomorrow, which will allot $300 in weekly unemployment benefits through Labor Day, among many other provisions in its $1.9 trillion price tag. The windfall of new cash — especially into bank accounts of middle- and working-class Americans — will likely provide a boon for the Services sector over the coming months and beyond.
After regular trading opens today, we expect to see a new Job Openings Report for the month of January. Expectations for this lagging indicator are for a 6.7 million headline in available jobs, up from the previous month’s 6.6 million. Elsewhere, analysts are keeping a closer eye on the 10-year bond yield, which rests at around 1.5% this morning — within range of where we’ve seen it since it started pointing northward a couple weeks back.
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Better-Than-Expected Weekly Jobless Claims Data
This morning, ahead of the opening trading bell, new jobless claims numbers have been released, with overall good results: 712K on the Initial Jobless Claims headline number was 42K fewer than the previous week’s upwardly revised 754K. It’s also the lowest total since pandemic conditions took hold, when pre-holiday shopping employment in November saw this number down to 711K. The three-week moving average is now at a more-orderly 759K.
Continuing Claims also stayed orderly, down again to 4.144 million for the week ending February 27 (Continuing Claims reports a week in arrears) from a slightly revised 4.337 million the previous week. As we know, however, pandemic assistance takes care of those unemployed citizens who expire on longer-term jobless claims, which is why we see such an orderly downward slope on its graph. At the first of the year, we were still recording 5.2 million longer-term claims per week.
More than 10 million Americans laid off during the pandemic — most due to no fault of their own; “shelter in place” and shut-downs of entire segments of the economy claimed a large portion of these layoffs — have not yet come back into the workforce. Last week’s nonfarm payroll report, while showing a big addition to headline employment last month, also indicated in the U-6 (aka “real unemployment”) up in double digits: 11.1. In all, some 20 million Americans currently receive some manner of jobless claim.
This is also being addressed by the new American Rescue Plan, passed yesterday in the House and expected to be signed by President Biden tomorrow, which will allot $300 in weekly unemployment benefits through Labor Day, among many other provisions in its $1.9 trillion price tag. The windfall of new cash — especially into bank accounts of middle- and working-class Americans — will likely provide a boon for the Services sector over the coming months and beyond.
After regular trading opens today, we expect to see a new Job Openings Report for the month of January. Expectations for this lagging indicator are for a 6.7 million headline in available jobs, up from the previous month’s 6.6 million. Elsewhere, analysts are keeping a closer eye on the 10-year bond yield, which rests at around 1.5% this morning — within range of where we’ve seen it since it started pointing northward a couple weeks back.