I’ll parse the CPI report later this morning, but first, let’s update initial jobless claims.

Initial claims were unchanged at 209,000 this week. The 4 week moving average fell -3,000 to 206,240. With a one week lag, continued claims rose 30,000 to 1.702 million:

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As usual, the YoY% changes are more important for this metric. And here, the news was pretty good as well. Initial claims were only up 1.5%, the more important 4 week average up 6.2%, while continuing claims were up 28.5%:

(Click on image to enlarge)

With the exception of continuing claims, these are not pre-recessionary readings.

As you may recall, I suspect there is some unresolved post-pandemic seasonality in these numbers. Although I won’t post a graph, in September last year claims averaged 190,500. In October they rose to 201,400. In November they rose further to 212,500.

With just one week of October in, the number is 3.8% higher than last year’s monthly average. If we do indeed have unresolved seasonality, I would expect claims to rise to roughly 220,000 or higher this month. We’ll see.

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