Jobless Claims Plunge

The stock market has continued to rally despite last week’s ugly jobs report. There was more bad news when jobless claims spiked. This morning, however, we learned that jobless claims dropped back to their previous range.

Jobless claims decreased by 42,000 to 346,000 in the week ended April 6, from a revised 388,000, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 49 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a drop to 360,000. A Labor Department official said no states were estimated and there was nothing unusual in the data.

Holidays such as Easter that fall on different weeks from year to year make it difficult to smooth out swings in the data, leading to increased volatility, the Labor Department said as the numbers were released. Waning firings, a sign employers are retaining workers to meet sales, help lay the ground for a pickup in hiring after payroll gains slowed in March.

“It’s heartening that these numbers have come down,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts, who forecast a decrease to 345,000, the closest among economists surveyed. “The weakness may have been overstated. This is an early piece of evidence that we’ll see a bounce back in the April employment numbers.”

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The Dow closed yesterday less than 200 points away from 15,000. It was only on February 1, that we broke though 14,000.

Posted by on April 11th, 2013 at 9:07 am


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