Stocks Surge On Small Drop In Initial Jobless Claims; Continuing Claims Hits 33-Month High

The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time fell from 12-month highs at 249k to 233k last week…

Source: Bloomberg

The non-seasonally-adjusted claims data plunged and is basically unchanged over one and two years…

Source: Bloomberg

…as it appears the Texas storm impact is fading…

Source: Bloomberg

With Michigan and Texas dominating the drop in initial claims…

But, continuing jobless claims rose to 1.875mm Americans – the highest since Nov 2021…

Source: Bloomberg

…and smoothing for the week to week noise – the 4-week moving average of initial claims also reached a new cycle high.

One key thing to note that we warned about…

One thing to note: the unemployment rate of 4.3% was boosted 0.2% by people on temporary layoff which increased by 249,000. This is mostly due to Hurricane Beryl, so expect the unemp rate to slide back to ~4.1% next month.

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 2, 2024

Is this bad news or good news?

Stocks seem to think ‘good’ news.

Imagine what happens next week if CPI is hotter than expected?