Initial Jobless Claims spike 66k this week, to its 2nd highest print of the year. For 5 weeks in a row we have see initial claims slide lower as the market celebrated multi-year lows and rallied on recovery hopes... and now it's all gone. Continuing claims has also missed expectations for the second week in a row. The Labor department explains this credibility-destroying data as due to the government shutdown and to "glitches" in the California computer system (which were supposedly resolved two weeks ago when the claims number was printing in the mid 200k range) as well as due to 15,000 non-Federal workers filing claims (being fired) due to the government shutdown. Of course, anyone fired in the past week can and likely will say they were fired due to the shutdown. The market shrugged off this data as irrelevant, which it is for the simple reason that initial claims reporting, now flawed for 5 weeks in a row, has become the latest "data" set to succumb to total farcism.
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