Unfurl your “Sky Is Falling!” banners.
Dredge up your best recession hyperbole.
And most importantly, post a zoomed-in chart with a truncated y-axis on Twitter (sorry, “X”) along with a cheap punchline: “Nothing to see here” always works.
Jobless claims in the US rose to the highest since August in the week to May 4, Thursday’s sole, lonely macro release showed. 231,000 overshot consensus by a mile. Economists expected 212,000 from the headline.
Apparently, the increase was in part attributable to New York public sector employees applying for benefits during a school recess.
The week-to-week gain was the largest since January. The four-week moving average is now 215,000.
Continuing claims overshot too, but not by much. At 1.785 million, ongoing claims in the week to April 27 were the highest in three weeks.
As is typical of cases where calendar anomalies coincide with data overshoots and undershoots, the media didn’t bother to reconcile the tension between an “expected” result and a print that constituted a meaningful surprise to “expectations.”
Anyway, if you can’t write some version of the generic “analysis” that invariably hit inboxes following Thursday’s claims data, congratulations: You’re not following the ebb and flow of the daily macro narrative that closely, which means you won’t be inclined to the sort of ruinous investment decisions that staying “dialed in” almost invariably precipitates.
For the rest of you, here’s the takeaway: Although initial claims remain subdued overall, and notwithstanding the New York factor, the uptick will be viewed in some corners as additional evidence to support the contention that the US labor market may finally be softening. One week doesn’t make a trend, but when considered with last week’s NFP undershoot and contraction-territory prints on both ISM headlines, the claims update shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. For a Fed short on excuses to cut rates, it’s fair to say a little “bad” news right now isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Feel free to paraphrase that for your own purposes if you’re too lazy to write your own copy and remember: We’re paying scores of Wall Streeters four, five and six times what we pay elementary school teachers and first responders to write that short paragraph. Some meritocracy.
The chart post-2021 looks rather “random walk” ish.
Apparently, last week’s increase was due in part to NY school bus drivers. Or something. I added some additional color to the article.
It appears things are a tiny bit slower. 1 week of claim figures has so much noise it is barely worth note. This is a slow week for releases so lots of commentators have to focus on data like this. Next week on the other hand has some important releases. That’s when I will pay more attention. I think the BOE commentary and information is significant though.
Replacement cost.
Apparently, it’s harder to replace a sell side analyst or Wall Street economist than it is to replace a teacher or fire fighter or bus driver – at least, to the standard/credentials a Wall Street bank will tolerate.
Meritocracy never had anything to do with it, unless you consider the ability to get the kind of credentials it takes to become a Wall Street sell side macro opinionator the meritocratic process (not entirely untrue but not what eco theory says is the justification for differences in compensation)
Do you know many Wall Street economists? You could replace them with the Chuck E. Cheeses animatronics band and you’d get better results and a better office vibe.
I don’t so I’ll take your word for it… 🙂
Maybe we should talk to the bank CEOs… seems like there’s some savings to be made…
Isn’t that what AI expected savings are all about? Just put a little animatronic to amuse the crowd