Initial jobless claims returned to a well-behaved range this week, down -13,000 to 228,000. The four week moving average was in line, increasing 1,000 to 227,000. Continuing claims, with the typical one week delay, declined -37,000 to 1.879 million, which is still near the top end of their 12 month range:

The one significant item from the above is that continuing claims have definitely been in a slowly increasing trend over the past eight months, indicating a slow weakening of the labor market.

In the more important for forecasting purposes YoY% comparisons, initial claims were actually lower by -0.4% than the same week last year, while the four week average remained higher by 5.8%, and continuing claims higher by 5.3%:

Again, this indicates the labor market was not as strong as last year, but it still denotes expansion.

This is also the indication from the “quick and dirty model” of the S&P 500 YoY compared with the 4 week average of claims (inverted):

It will take a couple more weeks of data before we know if the big jump in claims one week ago was just an outlier, or the beginning of a higher trend.

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