Thursday, May 2, 2013

Initial claims: 324,000


- by New Deal democrat

As you probably have already read elsewhere, initial claims fell to the lowest level since January 2008. The 4 week average is slightly above its March low this year.

We'll see what the following weeks hold, of course, but I just wanted to point out that this qualifies as a totally normal reading for an expansion. While it would be nice if claims were to continue to drop another 20,000 or 40,000 over time, even if they stay at this level, that is perfectly decent for a regularly expanding economy.