For whatever it’s worth — not a lot — US jobless claims ticked up during Thanksgiving week.

Thursday’s initial filers headline was 224,000 for the week ending November 30. That was ahead of consensus, which was looking for 215,000.

The prior week’s print was revised up from 213,000 to 215,000, just as the week before that was revised 2,000 higher in the second estimate to — wait for it — 215,000.

(The sarcastic among you might fairly ask if we’re just making this stuff up. “Just call it 215,000 and let’s go get some lunch.” “Screw it Dude, let’s go bowling.”)

The 9,000 week-to-week increase was the largest increase since the big, 35,000 spike in early October, when a couple of hurricanes imparted significant noise into the series.

The four-week moving average remains very low, at just 218,250. These numbers are nowhere near any kind of recession threshold. You’d need to see claims north of 300,000 to start talking about a downturn.

Continuing claims for the week to November 23 (remember, those are reported on a one-week lag to the initial filers series) were 1.87 million, below the 1.91 million consensus.

Meanwhile, the Challenger job cuts figure for November was 57,727. That was up 27% or so YoY.

So far this year, the Challenger, Gray & Christmas report counts 722,566 cuts.

“November saw downstream cuts to Automotive suppliers and parts manufacturers, as well as ongoing cuts in Consumer and Industrial Manufacturing Technology also saw a high number of layoff announcements,” Andrew Challenger said Thursday.

For reference, November’s 57,727 cuts were the fourth-highest for any November since the GFC. And, as Thursday’s report went on to note, job cut announcements YTD are the most since 2009 with just one (obvious) exception: 2020.