Last week, the number of people filing initial claims for state unemployment dropped by 20,000. As a result, benefits dropped to a seasonally adjusted 512,000. This drop in filings was the first in the past two weeks, and it is the lowest level of initial claims seen since early January.
That said, initial jobless claims have come in atop 500,000 for the past 51 weeks. In addition, the four-week average of claims dropped 3,000 to 523,700. This total is the lowest since the beginning of the year. Expectations called for initial jobless claims to drop to 520,000 last week, so it may be time to sound the rally bell.
This data comes before Friday's highly anticipated nonfarm payroll report. It is believed that nonfarm payrolls will drop by 150,000 in October, with an unemployment rate of 9.9%. Thursday's data is considered a precursor to Friday's report.
My concern is if the jobless claims data gets everyone's hopes up for the payroll report. We should see a solid rally thanks to the jobless claims data, but disappointing payroll data could make us all remember last Friday ... and I don't think that we want to do that right now.
Let's enjoy today's prosperity and cross our fingers that tomorrow's data will be similarly positive. If not, it's going to start feeling like Freaky Friday all over again.
Closing Bell: When We All Love the PIIGS (NBG, SQNM, PG, ERTS, KO)
Serious Money: Cheapest Stocks List Shrinks from 26 to 21
Chasing Value: Hasbro Earnings Makes My Point
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-05-2009 @ 1:08PM
Iridium said...
ding, ding, ding ring the rally bell for job losses over 500k!!!
I absolutely love how data that would be called horrendous at any time in history now calls for cheers of celebration. If a conservative was in the White House the headlines every day would be shouting how dismal everything is.
Retail sales only increased because of stores increasing margins on October in order to generate as much profit as possible before the holdiday markdowns.
A TV set that sold for $1200 at the begining of October got marked up to $1900 two weeks ago. I asked a store clerk the day after the price markup, "Wasn't that TV $1200 yesterday?"
He said, "We are trying to sell a few sets for $1900 before we mark it down to $900 after Black Friday. Some people don't check prices and will pay more for it."
Same thing goes for all retailers. Prices are always higher in October.
11-05-2009 @ 2:34PM
clikdawg said...
Mark --
"You're not fooling anyone, you know ... "
-- from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"