- by New Deal democrat
Before I deal with this morning’s March CPI report, let’s first update jobless claims.
On a weekly basis, initial claims rose 4,000 to 223,000. The four week moving average also was at 223,000, unchanged from last week. And with the typical one week delay, continuing claims declined -43,000 to 1.850 million:
As per usual, the YoY% changes are more important for forecasting purposes. On that basis, initial claims were up 5.2%, the four week average up 3.5%, and continuing claims up 2.5%:
I’ll dispense with the usual graph comparing with the unemployment rate since we are so early in the month.
The bottom line for claims remains generally neutral, representing a slowly expanding economy in the immediate future (everything subject to what the Idiot King does in the meantime of course).
Finally, as a postscript let me just note on the daily data for purposes for tracking any tariff impact, restaurant reservations through April 6 were up 3% on a 7 day moving average basis.
