The consensus among mainstream economists (chiefly Keynesians) was that this weeks jobless claims number would come in between 405,000 to 436,000. Instead, the number came in much lower.
Initial jobless claims dropped 24,000 in the July 23 week to 398,000 for the first sub-400,000 reading since early April (in a partial offset the prior week was revised 4,000 higher to 422,000). The four-week average of 413,750 is down a steep 8,500 in the week for a nearly 15,000 improvement from the month-ago reading.
Continuing claims have also been coming down. For the July 16 week they were down 17,000 to 3.703 million.
It should also be noted that the non seasonally adjusted claims plunged from 470K to 366K, a 104K move in one week. In other words, the BLS seasonal adjustment muted out a much larger real drop.
Employment is a lagging indicator, but the accelerating money growth has been going on long enough to even impact this indicator. A price inflationary recovery is well on its way. Trend following Keynesians are at least a month away from recognizing the trend.
Whatever the outcome of the whole debt ceiling nonsense, there is growing recognition that restoring fiscal sanity will require big big cuts in the size of government.
ReplyDeleteI am wondering whether entrepreneurial confidence is being boosted somewhat by the prospect of reduced government interference with market in the future.
22%
ReplyDelete22% is a depressionary red-flag.