The Labor Department’s figures on the latest weekly jobless claims came in with a drop of 16,000 down to 453,000, slightly better than expected but still a no-growth level for jobs. The consensus estimate was 460,000 per CNBC and 459,000 per Bloomberg.
The prior week’s level is also eating up some of this week’s improvements as the figure was revised to 469,000 from 465,000.
If you smooth the figures out via the four-week moving average, the claims figure there also fell by 6,250 to 458,000 versus the prior week’s revised average of 464,250.
The army of unemployed measured by the continuing jobless claims fell by a large number of about 83,000 down to 4,457,000 versus the previous week’s revised figure of 4,540,000.
A tad better, but nothing to celebrate.
JON C. OGG
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