The four-week moving average of jobless claim is meant to smooth out the weekly gyrations and that fell by 16,500 to 402,000.
The army of unemployed, measured with a one-week lag in the continuing jobless claims, fell by some 145,000 to 3,790,000.
Again, this is more of a start to the better (or less-bad) jobs market. Unfortunately, a reading this high still does nothing for the overall employment figures. It is a start, but it has to become more sustained and the claims have to fall considerably more for a real jobs market improvement.
If you wanted an analogy about how good this news is in reality, it is like taking your six-year old kid to the dollar store and saying. “You get two of anything you want in the whole store.”
JON C. OGG