Initial Claims Print Near Expectations, To Be Revised Adversely Next Week; Productivity Misses, Labor Costs Increase

American Airlines laying off tens of thousands? It's all good for the BLS, which just announced [6]that 367K initial unemployment claims were filed in the past week, a number which following next week's upward revision will be just in line with expectations of 371K. As expected, the bullish bias continues with last week's 377K claims number getting revised higher to 379K. Continuing claims will also be revised higher from 3437K to something 20-80K higher next week, even as expectations of 3535K appear high. The weekly move was substantial dropping by 130K from 3567K. Which means that a huge swath of people moved from Continuing Claims to EUC 2008s, a number which sure enough swelled by 100K in the past week. Those on Extended Benefits declined by 57K as the tail end of the 99-week cliff relentlessly spits out all those who can't find a job after 2 years. And in other labor news, Q1 GDP will likely see more cuts after nonfarm productivity came at 0.7% on expectations of 0.8%, and the previous number was revised lower from 2.3% to 1.9%. Finally labor costs rose from an upward revised -2.1% to 1.2%, higher than expectations of 0.8%. Overall nothing material today, as all focus on tomorrow's NFP, which as noted here previously, has a big chance of surprising to the downside.