Jobless Claims: Still Skewed By Seasonals

Bottom Line:  Claims fell for the third week, surprising to the downside. However, the tally was unchanged on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, suggesting the Juneteenth and 4th of July holidays continue to have a lingering impact on the headline data. Continuing claims have now ticked higher for two weeks and likely better reflect the underlying trend with fewer seasonal adjustments. Overall, the claims data has been messy in the last few months, with some states experiencing fraud and heavy seasonal factors, but the underlying details suggest the trend remains towards very slow cooling in a red-hot labor market.Initial Jobless Claims FELL -9k in the week ended July 15th to 228k, BELOW the 4-week average of 237.5k, BELOW the 13-week average of 240.84615k but 15k ABOVE the year-ago level.  Non-seasonally adjusted Claims were nearly unchanged, -326.Continuing Claims ROSE 33k in the week ended July 8th to 1.754M, ABOVE the 4-week average of 1.7315M, BELOW the 13-week average of 1.772846M, and 413k ABOVE the year-ago level.