After disappointingly staying above 1 million in the prior week, economists expected less than 1 million (950k) Americans to file for first time unemployment benefits in the last week, and the final print was better than expected (below 1 million) at 881,000...

Source: Bloomberg

Six months into this sh*tshow driven by the government's forced lockdown, this is still over four times larger than the average weekly claims data pre-COVID!!

California saw by far the worst jump in claims while Florida, Georgia, and Michigan all saw drops in claims...

Continuing Claims improved again (dropping by 1.238mm last week)...

Source: Bloomberg
 

Remember these numbers are completely useless since the seasonal adjustments are now completely different (and are not restated historically - thus making the week to week comps like apples-to-carrots).

In fact, on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, initial claims worsened week-over-week...