Quick Comment: Jobs

It’s been a quiet week for fresh data, but today’s weekly report on new claims for unemployment assistance is worth noting. For the first time since 2008 we have claims below 400,000 – they came in at 383,000 last week. It’s too early to breath too easily, we need many more such weeks, but this may give us insight into where the jobs market actually is. As I have said many times here, the awful winter weather has made getting good data very difficult. Not only have local government offices often fallen behind in data collection and reporting, but workers themselves have delayed registering for help because of bad weather. So both the monthly payroll numbers and this weekly series have been very unreliable indicators of what is going on in the economy.

I am not going to suggest that today’s report is an exception to that noisy data trend, but such a solid movement is unlikely to be completely reversed next week. Thus we can assume something is happening. Something positive. How much, and for how long, are debatable.

So: exercise caution. Exhale a little. This could be what we are waiting for. Let’s hope so.