Weekly Jobless Data Still No Help

The Labor Department has just released its latest round of Weekly Jobless Claims fell 17,000 to 421,000 claims from an upwardly revised 438,000 the week before.  Bloomberg had estimates pegged at 425,000 for the week.

The four-week average came to a drop of 4,000 to 427,500 claims.

The army unemployed measured by the continuing jobless claims fell 191,000 to 4.086 million from a prior revised figure of 4.277 million.

While the figures are a slight bit better than expected, this is just a market-neutral figure.  It is just too close to estimates to matter.  We are also still quite a ways off from the jobs market improving and this release is not expected to help the latest unemployment report.

JON C. OGG