Jobless claims remained well behaved last week, as they increased 6,000 to 222,000. The four week moving average declined -750 to 220,250. With the typical one week delay, continuing claims declined -37,000 to 1.841 million, at the low end of its range over the past 10 months:

As usual, the YoY% changes are more important for forecasting. There, initial claims were up 6.2%, the four week average up 3.0%, and continuing claims up 4.0%:

These are all consistent with a slowly expanding economy.

Since initial claims lead the unemployment rate by several months, here’s our updated look at that, including initial plus continuing claims:

There is no indication of upward pressure on the unemployment rate in the next several months.

Finally, although I won’t bother with a graph this week, after several days being negative YoY, for the past week the stock market has rebounded to higher YoY, finishing yesterday up +6.0%. Thus the “quick and dirty” recession forecasting model indicates continuing expansion for now.

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