The weekly jobless claims data is out and we have a second week of coming below that 600,000 mark. The new figure is down 47,000 to a level of 522,000. The reading of 565,000 originally reported last week was revised higher by 4,000 jobs to 569,000. Bloomberg had a consensus estimate of 535,000.
That makes two weeks of better-than-expected data. More importantly, there was a monster drop in the army of continuing jobless claims. Those taking repeat benefits dropped down by 642,000 to 6,273,000. That is the lowest reading in about 3 months.
The trick here is in determining if this is just the seasonal adjusted trends or if this is more of the green shoots or continued less-bad trends. Many traders do not believe these to be a clear sign that the jobs market is improving. We would also make the note again that jobless figures have to fall sharply under that 500,000 figure to stop the growth of the unemployment rate.
Jon C. Ogg
July 16, 2009
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