Somebody check TruthSocial. Donald Trump’s propaganda machine might’ve made a new poster to celebrate the lowest weekly total for initial jobless claims since 1969.

If you read every article published here… well, first God bless you. I hope it’s worth it. I think it is. I’d read everything I write. If you’re that guy or gal, you know I’ve painstakingly documented the trajectory of what may be a “dead” dataset: The Labor Department’s initial filers series.

I say “dead” because like a lot of government data in the 2020s, it feels like it might’ve lost its capacity to say anything meaningful about the macro. But if that’s not true, and the weekly tally of first-time unemployment benefit filers still means something, then it’s notable that the total was just 189,000 for the week ended on Halloween.

As the figure shows, that’s tied for the lowest in modern history, with apologies for the recency bias inherent in my use of the word “modern” (hey, at least I put it in scare quotes).

With this release, I feel somewhat vindicated for spending so much time recently on the four-week average of the initial claims series.

That metric slipped to just 194,750 with this week’s release. It’s now spent five weeks below 200,000.

There’s the updated chart. The undershoot’s getting progressively deeper.

When the four-week initial filers average undershot 200,000 for a second consecutive week early last month, it marked just the fourth time since 1969 that the metric sported a 100,000-handle for two straight reports. My point in highlighting it was (and still is) that this previously rare event is “on the verge of becoming semi-routine,” as I put it.

To recycle some more color from a October 22 article, it took more than half a century after the 1969 occurrence for the rolling measure to repeat the feat. Following the next occurrence, in 2022, it took less than four years for a repeat. After the August 2026 episode, it took just two months.

The updated figure above gives you a sense of how the current streak stacks up to history.

I don’t know how much to read into this, but I’m now very confident in asserting that it deserves the repeated mentions I’ve afforded it in recent weeks.

As for the 1.718 million Americans counted among the continuing claims series for the week ended October 24 (that series is reported on a two-week delay) I have just one question: Don’t you know Amazon’s hiring?