- by New Deal democrat
I’ll post about the CPI later this morning. But unusually, the biggest news of the morning was initial jobless claims, which spiked to 263,000, an increase of 27,000 from the previous week. The four week moving average increased 9,750 to 240,500. Meanwhile, with the typical one week delay, continuing claims were unchanged at 1.939 million:
For comparison, the weekly number was the highest since October of 2021, but note that the four week average was higher just in June, and also in the summer of 2023:
This may well just be a one week outlier. A scan of the State inputs indicates that initial claims in Texas nearly doubled, from 16,600 to 31,900, last week. It’s unclear which employer(s) are the culprits, as there have been a number of articles in the Texas media about increased layoffs in a number of industries in the past month.
As usual, the YoY% changes are more important for forecasting purposes. While the one week number was higher by 14.3%, the four week and monthly averages are much more important. And the four week moving average was only higher by 4.3%. Continuing claims are up by 5.1%:
So take this week’s number with a liberal dose of salt. Still, it is consistent with my view that there were some unresolved seasonal distortions this summer, which would resolve this month. The bottom line is that jobless claims continue to score “neutral,” suggesting a weak but still expanding economy.
