On the heels of last week's surprise beat in jobless claims (amid all the weather turmoil), this week's initial claims beat by the most since November. Down 9,000 to 315,000, this is the best (lowest) claims data in over three-and-a-half months providing the Fed cover to continue Tapering as the number of people of benefits rolls overall dropped 48,000 to 2.86 million (lowest since December). In the big picture the trend of decreasing layoffs has stalled but shows no sign of improvement in the last 6 months.
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Charts: Bloomberg