After consecutive disappointments, jobless claims were back on track in the week to June 26.
364,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, a new pandemic low, and down sharply from an upwardly-revised 415,000 the previous week (figure below).
Consensus was expecting 388,000, so Thursday’s print was a decent beat.
The four-week moving average fell to 392,750, the lowest of the pandemic era.
It looked briefly as though claims might begin to move higher, or at least stop falling. That, in turn, raised additional questions about labor market frictions and the time table on getting the country back to pre-pandemic levels of employment.
The latest headline initial claims print may help to allay some of those fears. The weekly drop was the largest in two months (figure below).
Continuing claims for the week ended June 19 were 3.469 million. That was more than expected. The market wanted 3.34 million.
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims rose last week, while ongoing PUA and PEUC claims stood at 5,935,630 and 5,261,991, respectively, as of June 12.
All in all, some 14.7 million Americans are receiving some type of unemployment assistance.
Thursday’s headline initial claims print was good news at the margins, but the days when markets cared more about claims than almost any other indicator (as was the case for much of the pandemic, given the “higher frequency” nature of claims versus more “stale” readings on top-tier numbers) are behind us.
Seems to me that the Fed is the ONLY thing the market cares about anymore.
When its the only thing keeping it going, you bet that is what the market is looking at, by the time the music stops its too late to leave the party.
Null hypothesis: market cares about nothing this summer?
It feels as if we are in a holiday week summer market. Next week likely the same, although the monthly employment report has the potential to move things around – released Friday.