Jobless Claims Fall, But Remain Embarrassingly High
In a welcome reprieve, US jobless claims fell sharply last week.
730,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits, down 111,000 from a downwardly revised 841,000 the previous week.
The market was looking for 825,000. The range was 760,000 to 900,000, so the headline print was better than the most optimistic guess from 40 economists.
The four-week moving average fell to 807,750.
This comes with the usual caveats. 730,000 is not "good" in an absolute sense. In fact, it's terrible. A year (a