For the better part of two months, recurring jobless claims in the US served as an offset of sorts for persistently subdued initial claims.

To briefly recapitulate, market observers spent an inordinate amount of time during the first half of 2023 parsing every weekly claims release for evidence of an impending recession. That effort became torturously belabored and ultimately came to nothing. There was no recession and by mid-October, initial claims were printing new “since January” lows.

And yet, all the while, continuing claims crept higher, reaching levels last seen in November of 2021. That was “good” news for the recession crowd, and also for dovish policy narratives.

It’s with that in mind that recurring claims plunged 64,000 in the week to November 25, according to Thursday’s release.

It was the second-largest weekly drop in two years.

Of course, it’d be a mistake to read anything into the decline. It came on the heels of the largest weekly increase since September of 2021, and one week hardly changes the trajectory.

Still, it was worth a mention on a day when the US data docket is sparse ahead of Friday’s jobs report, and it was notable to the extent it stood apart from back-to-back soft reads on the labor market (i.e., the JOLTS report and ADP).

Initial claims for the week to December 2 were 220,000, in line with estimates.

Meanwhile, job cuts dropped 41% YoY in November, according to the update from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. It was the first YoY decline since July. Still, cuts rose from October, and the 686,860 announced cuts for 2023 so far is more than double the number announced over the first 11 months of 2022.

“The job market is loosening, and employers are not as quick to hire,” Andrew Challenger said Thursday. “The labor market appears to be stabilizing with a more normal churn, though we expect to continue to see layoffs going into the New Year.”

2023 will see the most total job cut announcements since 2009, excluding 2020 for obvious reasons.