Stop us when this sounds familiar. Last week's 365K number has been revised to 368K, which is where the expectations for this week's print were. Instead, we got 367K claims this week, a 1K beat to expectations [6], which will be a 2K miss next week of course, but at least the pre-election propaganda media has their headline: "Initial Claims improve by 1,000." And scene. Naturally, the same thing happened for continuing claims, which beat expectations of 3275K, printing at 3229K, with the last week's print revised to 3290K from 3276K. The more disturbing form an end demand standpoint data, is that yet another 40K dropped off extended claims and EUCs. Finally in what is the best new for the market, and worst for the Economy, is that the March trade deficit [7]soared to $51.8 billion, on expectations of -$50 billion, which was the biggest trade balance drop in 10 months. What this means is that Q1 GDP which already is tracking at 1.9%, just got lobbed to 1.5%. Yes: the Q1 GDP first revision will likely show the 2.2% number is now in the low to mid 1% range.
[8]
As for the BLS initial claims upward revision track record, here it is.
[9]
h/t John Lohman