Jobless Claims Rise to 898,000

This morning’s jobless claims report rose to 898,000. That was above Wall Street’s forecast of 830,000. This was also the highest report since August 22. I’ve talked before about the increase slowing down, but now claims are now moving in the wrong direction.

The total for the week ended Oct. 10 was the highest number since Aug. 22 and another sign that the labor market continues to struggle to get back to its pre-coronavirus pandemic mark as cases rise and worries increase over a renewed wave in the fall and winter. The number represented a gain of 53,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised total of 845,000.

The stimulus talks appear to be deadlocked but the White House has signaled its willingness to keep negotiating.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the lead negotiator for Democrats, had identified testing as one of the main sticking points in talks. Mnuchin appeared to cede ground to the speaker in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“That issue is getting overblown,” Mnuchin said. “We’ve agreed to $178 billion overall for health. It’s an extraordinary amount of money. We’d agreed with the Democrats with $75 billion going to testing, contact tracing.”

The big banks are usually the first to report earnings and today we got the report from Morgan Stanley. The bank had a solid Q3. Overall, the banks are doing pretty well. This week, Morgan Stanley’s market cap passed Citigroup’s.

The banks are currently not allowed to increase dividends or buy back stock. This has resulted in a growing cash hoard at the banks.

Posted by on October 15th, 2020 at 11:07 am


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