The U.S. Labor Department has reported its change in weekly jobless claims. Last week was of course skewed by Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, and now that we have seen an unemployment report last Friday, and now that the election is over, it is going to really take a huge disparity in the weekly claims for these to make much of a market difference right now.

Last week’s claims were down by 8,000 to 355,000 and the prior week’s 363,000 was left unrevised. Dow Jones was calling for 365,000. Again, this report is hard to rely on because the Labor Department said that certain offices were closed due to power outages and some data has not been included.

Another reading is the army of unemployed measured by the continuing claims. This comes with a one-week lag and the report was down by 135,000 to 3.127 million. The four-week average on weekly claims rose by 3,250 to 370,500.

Again, today’s reading should not be given much weight due to the obvious issues.

JON C. OGG

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