Durable Goods & Weekly Jobless Claims Act From Mixed to Spoilers

We are seeing some caution in Durable Goods for April this morning, while the weekly jobless claims held very little surprise either way.

Durable Goods looks in line with estimates on the surface, but the Commerce Department report shows continued economic concern on the spending of big-ticket items if you look inside the data.  The headline data is up 0.2% to $215.53 billion on Durable Goods against a consensus of -0.3% from Dow Jones.  The report for March was revised from a prior reading of -4% to -3.7%.

Where the Durable Goods data gets murky is that the ex-transportation durable goods data was down by -0.6% as cars and parts were in higher demand; the ex-data on a non-defense spending basis was -1.9%. We also saw the first drop in unfilled orders in over a year but that was only -0.1% and it may signal another weak number in the May report due next month.

Weekly jobless claims were down by 2,000 to 370,000 according to the Labor Department.  Last week’s report was revised to 372,000 from 370,000. This figure is right in line with estimates as Bloomberg had a consensus of 371,000.

The four-week average was down 5,500 to 370,000 and the army of unemployed measured by the continuing jobless claims fell by 29,000 to 3.26 million in the prior week.

Today’s economic data appears to be offering no significant read for overall growth versus contraction arguments.

JON C. OGG