While the utility of initial claims data in a regime dominated by 70% retention of part-time workers and in which even the Fed says the distortion of the labor force participation rate makes unemployment numbers skewed to the downside, those who follow the weekly claims number will be happy (or maybe sad) to learn that there were 333K new initial claims filed in the week ended August 3, just 2K below expectations and 5K above last week's upward revised 328K (from 326K). No states claims were estimated in the past week the DOL reported. The good news: the four-week average fell to the lowest since November 2007. The bad news: this number is hardly horrible enough to send futures soaring.
Although continuing claims did miss, rising 3018K, up from 2951K and above expectations of 2950K. Then again, this hardly offset the 175K drop in persons collecting benefits across all programs, including a 127K decline in Regular State benefits collections. Looks like the market will have to obsess over other bad data to promote hopes of continuing untapering even though the writing is clear on the wall at this point.
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