Jobless Claims Improve (Again) As Labor Costs Soar More Than Expected

Despite the ongoing headlines of layoffs across all industries, US jobless claims data continues to refuse to show anything but an extremely strong labor market, with initial claims at 190k last week (better than the 195k expected) and continuing claims at 1.655mm (below the 1.669mm expected)

Source: Bloomberg

Kentucky and California saw the biggest drop in claims while Massachusetts and Rhode Island saw the largest rise…

The total number of Americans on some form of unemployment benefits continues to hover around one-year highs…

Source: Bloomberg

More problematically for Powell and his pals, unit labor costs for Q4 (final) printed +3.2% QoQ (double the expected 1.6% rise), up for the 7th quarter in a row.

Source: Bloomberg

We’re gonna need a bigger rate-hike!