As we noted last week, when there is no hiring, there is no firing [4]...
[5]
and so it is that initial jobless claims collapsed to 264k this week (versus 290k expectations) - the lowest since April 2000 (and 2nd lowest ever on record). That is not what the market wants to hear right now... it is craving bad news to get The Fed re-engaged. Continuing claims inched higher from 2.382 million to 2.389 million but remains near cycle lows.
[6]
To sum up: its never been better than this for employment... according to the government-supplied data. Unless you look at this...
[7]
Charts: Bloomberg
