Jobless Claims: Surprisingly Holding Below 200k

Bottom Line:  Jobless claims were little changed last week, surprisingly holding below 200k again. The short-term trend in claims remained lower and the medium- to longer-term trends were mixed, with continuing claims still trending slightly higher. Our Nowcast model suggests another sharp decline in claims this week. With data available through last night, claims looked to be running just below 180k. We remain mindful that some employees who lost jobs in the early rounds of large company layoff announcements last year will start to lose severance pay and could be looking to collect benefits in the coming months. So while claims remain historically low, we are watching closely for signs of an uptick in the trend.Initial Jobless Claims were nearly unchanged in the week ended February 11th, -1k to 194k, ABOVE the 4-week average of 189.5k, BELOW the 13-week average of 208.53846k but -15k BELOW the year-ago level. Claims for the 4th of Feb were revised down from +196k to +195k. Non-seasonally adjusted Claims FELL -9.28k

Continuing Claims ROSE 16k in the week ended February 4th to 1.696M, ABOVE the 4-week average of 1.673M, ABOVE the 13-week average of 1.658462M but -18k BELOW the year-ago level. Continuing Claims for the 28th of Jan were revised down from +1.688M to +1.68M.