US jobless claims overshot meaningfully in Thursday’s update, a development which may underscore growing concerns about a slowdown for the world’s largest economy.

I’ll get the caveats out of the way: It’s always a mistake to read too much (or anything at all) into one week’s claims data. We’ve seen so many false alarms from this series over the past three or so years that attempts to dramatize a given week’s update invariably come across as contrived and overwrought, no matter how skilled the catastrophist’s pen.

That said, 242,000 on the headline was the highest since December 7 and topped every estimate from economists. Consensus was 221,000.

The 22,000 week-to-week jump was the biggest since early October, when the data was distorted by hurricanes and other anomalies. Thursday’s print pulled the four-week average up to 224,000, the highest of 2025.

Continuing claims, by contrast, undershot, printing 1.862 million for the week to February 15 (i.e., NFP survey week). Consensus there was 1.871 million.

Unadjusted initial filers in D.C. — i.e., the DOGE “government recession” proxy — rose again to a new two-year high. But there was no evidence of stress in the “blast radius” (if you will) as claims fell in Virginia and Maryland.

It’s worth noting that this release probably isn’t the best way to track the early impact of Elon Musk’s effort to shrink the bureaucracy. I don’t think the initial claims series picks up federal filers. Even so, many worry the risk to the economy from DOGE emanates from government contractors, whose employment prospects are seemingly darkening by the day in Musk’s America.

Meanwhile, the second estimate of Q4 GDP would’ve been a non-event — most major aggregates were unchanged — except for an upward revision to the core-PCE series which, thanks apparently to methodological tweaks, was revised two-tenths higher, to 2.7%.