The Labor Department is out with its weekly jobless claims data and again we have a reading south of 500,000. The claims rose 17,000 to 474,000 versus a Bloomberg target of 460,000. That reverses some of the improvements of the last two weeks even if it is under the 500,000 mark.
The big change was in the army of unemployed measured in the continuing jobless claims of repeat benefit takers. That figure dropped 303,000 to 5,157,000 against a week earlier revised figure of 5,460,000. There is debate out from both bulls and bears about what has happened to that continuing claims figure as to whether these are benefits having been maximized or whether they are going into temporary or hourly work.
Futures are up a tad more since the numbers hit, but this week’s jobless data this morning is probably not going to be a major market mover today after last Friday’s unemployment data was down to 10.0%.
JON C. OGG
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