If you came into Thursday’s US economic data looking for evidence of additional labor market softening or slower spending, you were left wanting.

Jobless claims printed below estimates for the week to August 24, while Q2 GDP was revised higher in the second estimate on the back of a sharp upward revision to the personal consumption component.

As the figure below shows, the spending impulse re-accelerated fairly dramatically in Q2. 2.9% stood in stark contrast to the initially-reported 2.3%.

Do note: Consensus expected a slight downward revision.

Thanks (solely) to that, the headline GDP print for Q2 was revised up to show a 3% QoQ annualized expansion. Economists expected no change from the originally-reported 2.8% pace.

This imparts an upward bias to Friday’s personal spending print. Fortunately, the core PCE index in the GDP release was revised down a tick to 2.8% from 2.9% in the advance estimate. So, that’s good news. I suppose the release was just good news in general, now that you mention it. Strong spending and cooler core price growth is exactly what you want. (I don’t know whether good news is bad news for stocks today. You’ll have to ask them. Stocks, I mean.)

It’s worth noting that the GDP/GDI disparity’s back. The latter printed 1.3% in Thursday’s release, leaving a 1.7ppt ravine between the aggregates. Expansion skeptics have long suggested the gap between the two is indicative of… I don’t know, something bad.

As a reminder, the NBER looks at the average of the two, which was a healthy 2.1% in Q2, as illustrated above.

Meanwhile, the initial jobless claims print was benign at 231,000, down 2,000 from the prior week. The four-week moving average is now 231,500, an 11-week low. Continuing claims for the week to August 17 were 1.868 million, slightly below estimates, but up 13,000 from a downwardly-revised prior.

Ongoing filers remain elevated near the highest since November of 2021, but the last real “inflection” in the trend was in late-May / early-June. Things have leveled off a bit since then. We’ll see how it goes. As far as the initial claims headline, 231,000 is (at least) 20,000 below levels where anyone should be concerned. That series would need to get up to 300,000 or so before the alarm bells would start sounding and frankly, 300,000 wouldn’t be high by historical standards. It wasn’t until 2014 that the series moved sustainably below that level.

All in all, Thursday’s data argued against a 50bps Fed cut next month (i.e., in favor of a “regular” 25bps reduction). The GDP revision’s obviously backward looking, and claims are subordinate to the NFP headline and the jobless rate. If it’s clarity you’re looking for, you’ll have to wait until next week, but for now, the narrative’s simple: The labor market’s holding up, and as long as people have jobs, people will spend.