Don’t look now — seriously, don’t, because it’s immaterial to pretty much everything including and especially the December FOMC narrative — but US jobless claims just fell to their lowest since April.

The Labor Department’s all caught up on the initial filers series, or at least it looks that way to me. The release was suspended during the shutdown like everything else, but it’s backfilled in full.

Wednesday’s print — released a day early to account for the holiday — was just 216,000 for the week to November 22. Consensus was looking for 225,000.

The four-week average, at 223,750, was the lowest since August.

Continuing claims in the week to November 15 were 1.96 million. That was a touch below estimates.

The ongoing claims series, you’re reminded, is still loitering near its highest levels since late 2021, but that’s been the case for so long that it barely bears mention.

Frankly, the initial filers series feels like it’s lost most of its relevance post-COVID. It seems like a “dead” series, for lack of a better way to put it.

Every week, there are more high-profile job cut announcements across corporate America and the Challenger report covering last month showed 153,074 cuts, the most for any October in 22 years.

You’d expect some of that to show up in the initial claims series eventually, but here we sit, looking at the fewest claims in seven months.