At 339,000 initial jobless claims, this is the 3rd miss in thelast 4 weeks and back above the 8-month average suggesting that the best in the layoff trajectory of this 'recovery' is over. Continuing claims remains slid modestly and, of course, emergency benefits remain at zero. Of course, as we showed here [5], it is not layoffs (and thus initial jobless claims) that matters - what is crucial is that there is no hiring...
[6]
As the chart below shows, using the most recent JOLTS data [7], while historically the hires and cumulative job change numbers have tracked each other almost perfectly, in the current environment, hiring is far below where it should be if one were to believe the headline job numbers.
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