The now ubiquitous prior upward revision helped headlines crow of 'another' decline in initial jobless claims this week. Initial claims beat expectation of 344k with a 339k print, whis is now a drop from a previously reported 338k that is now revised up to 341k... all makes sense, right? It seems claims have stabilized somewhat after the few weeks of glitches and shutdown SNAFUs [4] and the downtrend appears to have stalled as these levels of claims are at the same level as 5 months ago. Bear in mind this is the last print for 2013 (not first print of 2014 data) and with 1,391,297 people on Emergency benefits due to start 'tapering' this week, we can only imagine the 'glitches' that will occur going forward.
With government shutdown and software glitches [4], this may be the "cleanest" print we have had in months...
[5]