The Labor Department just released the weekly jobless claims data and showed that the weekly jobless claims fell down by 19,000 back under the 400,000 threshold to some 391,000 claims. Dow Jones was looking for the claims figure to be about 405,000. The reading from the prior week was also revised from 410,000 to 413,000.
The four-week moving average of jobless claim is meant to smooth out the weekly gyrations and that fell by 16,500 to 402,000.
The army of unemployed, measured with a one-week lag in the continuing jobless claims, fell by some 145,000 to 3,790,000.
Again, this is more of a start to the better (or less-bad) jobs market. Unfortunately, a reading this high still does nothing for the overall employment figures. It is a start, but it has to become more sustained and the claims have to fall considerably more for a real jobs market improvement.
If you wanted an analogy about how good this news is in reality, it is like taking your six-year old kid to the dollar store and saying. “You get two of anything you want in the whole store.”
JON C. OGG
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