Jobless Claims Up, But U.S. Labor Market Stays Strong
Zacks Investment Research | Nov 30, 2016 10:13PM ET
Thursday, December 1, 2016 Sandwiched between yesterday’s ADP (NASDAQ:ADP) private sector jobs report and tomorrow’s Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) non-farm payroll report, weekly Initial Jobless Claims were released before the bell today. Claims have ballooned up from an unchanged 251K last week to 268K this week. This keeps us within the 4-week moving average of a 250-275K range, which remains consistent with a strong U.S. labor market. However, the 17K jump is pretty substantial, especially coming as it does at the dawn of a new holiday season, when temporary jobs appear by the bushelful in retail, leisure and logistics spaces. Glancing back at yesterday’s ADP numbers, 216K private sector jobs was well ahead of the 170-180K analysts had expected — and they were factoring in holiday seasonality already. Looking both forward to Friday’s big jobs report and the results from the BLS last month, analysts expect a big upturn tomorrow from October’s less-than-expected 161K new U.S. jobs. If ADP reached 216K, how high could this number go when we add government jobs into the mix? Is 250K possible (which we saw plenty of times in 2015)? Further, the unemployment rate looks to dip even lower into the 4-handle to 4.8%. All of this suggests, the 17K jump in claims today notwithstanding, that the labor market has tightened in a meaningful way. Read Zacks Chief Strategist John Blank’s latest Zacks Investment Research
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