“No hiring, no firing.”

That’s the macro refrain in America, and it was underscored Thursday first by a lackluster read on seasonal hiring from Challenger, Gray & Christmas (“no hiring”), and then by government data which showed both initial and continuing jobless claims remain quite subdued (“no firing”).

The initial filers series printed a below-consensus 197,000 for the week ended September 26. It was the third consecutive sub-200,000 print.

As the figure shows, the four-week moving average is now on the brink of slipping below the 200,000 level for the second time in two months.

It was the same story with continuing claims. At 1.701 million, the ongoing filers series came in well below consensus and now sits at the lowest since March of 2023.

As recently as this time last year, macro bears could point to continuing claims as a harbinger. That’s out the window now.

As the figure above shows, this series is falling like a stone.

Meanwhile, in other labor market news no one cares about, the Revelio Labs nonfarm payrolls proxy printed a 57,000 gain for September. You can take that for whatever it is (or isn’t) worth.

Try as I might — and as much as I’d love to have a reliable stand in for the BLS series in an era when national economic statistics are at risk of being commandeered by the executive alongside monetary policy — I can’t get there with the Revelio series. It’s an admirable effort, and I suppose it’s worth the time they spend to compile it, but for my purposes, the revisions make it unusable.

Consider the following. Prior to Thursday’s update, the series showed gains of 36,517, 50,808 and 51,246 for August, July and June, respectively. After Thursday’s revisions — which, as usual, impacted the entire history of the series going back five years — those prints are 40,637, negative 4,204 and negative 21,307. I can’t do anything with that, and with apologies to Revelio, neither can anyone else.