Weekly Unemployment Claims (every Thursday)
This morning’s sole relevant economic release was last week’s unemployment update that showed new claims for jobless benefits spiked by 44,000. This brought the number of new claims to 236,000 last week after the previous week’s total was revised from 191,000 to 192,000 initial filings. The weekly jump was the largest since March 2020 and strongly supports the theory that the labor market is softening. As a sign of economic weakness, the update can be labeled good news for bonds and mortgage rates. Bonds were already trading in positive ground before this report was posted, but improved more after the 8:30 AM ET release.