Weekly Jobless Claims Support QE2’s End As Immaterial

The data on the weekly jobless claims from the U.S. Labor Department is again supporting why the end of QE2 just doesn’t matter.  The Labor Market remains tight and workers are getting fired at a rate that is still far faster than a true job growth market.

The current week’s data from the Labor Department shows that weekly claims fell by 1,000 to 428,000 and the prior week’s initial figure of 429,000 was unrevised.  Bloomberg’s consensus was for the weekly claims to drop to 420,000.  If you believe that the four-week average matters, that rose by 500 to 426,750.

The big figure is the army of unemployed measured by the continuing jobless claims that is reported with a 1-week lag.  That figure fell by 12,000 to 3,702,000.

We will get to see the June unemployment rate next Friday and the May reading was 9.1%.  The current expectation is a rate of 9.0% to 9.1% depending upon your source.  Unfortunately, the jobless claims have been over 400,000 for each week since early April.  That figure needs to get closer to 300,000 for the real jobs growth to have a chance of a fast labor market recovery.

QE2 ends today, the end of the pain in the jobs market remains elusive… Here are the other nine reasons besides the labor market as to why QE2’s end should be priced into the markets.

JON C. OGG