Initial, Continuing Jobless Claims Plunge To Lowest In 5 Months

Initial jobless claims were expected to rise modestly last week - after hitting 2-moth lows the prior week - but instead they tumbled further to 221k (the lowest since Feb 2023)

Source: Bloomberg

Non-seasonally-adjusted claims plunged from 6-month highs to 2-month lows.

New York saw the biggest drop in claims, followed by California (with only Vermont seeing a rise, and that was tiny). We have never seen a distribution of states' claims that is as skewed as this... something is afoot.

Continuing Claims also dropped to 1.69mm Americans - the first time back below 1.7mm since Jan 2023...

Source: Bloomberg

Does any of this smell like The Fed's 500bps of hikes had any impact at all?