Weekly Jobless Claims Only Somewhat Augment Giant ADP Figures Before Unemployment

After a sizzling hot figure from ADP on private sector jobs created, the weekly jobless claims from the U.S. Labor Department came in with a drop of 15,000 to 372,000 for the week.

Bloomberg had the consensus target at 375,000 versus a preliminary figure of 381,000 reported a week ago.  That figure was just revised higher to 387,000. What investors will care about is that this is now almost two months in a row of sub-400K on the weekly jobless claims.  These still need to get closer to 300,000 on a historical basis before economists will say that the firing waves are over.

The four-week average fell by 3,250 to 373,250 and the army of unemployed measured by the continuing jobless claims fell by another 22,000 to 3.595 million but that figure has a one week lag on its reporting.

Today’s news from the Labor Department is moderately better than expected, but it is pale in comparison to the jump reported by ADP.

JON C. OGG