Jobless Claims Drop Below One Million

This morning’s jobless claims report fell to 963,000. This is the first time in 20 weeks that it was below one million. Economists had been expecting 1.1 million.

While the sub-1 million reading marks a milestone, there’s still plenty of work to do for the job market to get back to normal. Those collecting benefits for at least two weeks, known as continuing claims, totaled nearly 15.5 million, a decrease of 604,000 from a week ago but still well above pre-pandemic levels.

“The labor market continues to improve, but unemployment remains a huge problem for the U.S. economy,” wrote Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services. “The number of people filing for unemployment insurance, both regular and PUA benefits, continues to steadily decline as layoffs abate. But job losses remain extremely elevated, far above their pre-pandemic level.”

Yesterday, the S&P 500 got as high as 3,387.89, which was above the highest all-time closing number for the index. However, by the closing bell, the S&P 500 came just shy of a new record. The market is mostly flat so far today.

One quick factoid: Industrial stocks (red) have slightly edged out tech stocks (blue) over the past several weeks. I would not have guessed that.

Posted by on August 13th, 2020 at 11:35 am


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