Jobless Claims: Decline Due to Barbie Movie?

Bottom Line:  Claims fell for the fourth week, surprising to the downside again. We have had plenty of seasonal adjustment excuses for weeks from the Juneteenth holiday through the week after Independence Day. But those factors should be fading into the background, and yet claims continue to move lower. We are running out of excuses for why jobless claims, which had been trending modestly higher, are moving back down again.... maybe people didn't file for jobless benefits because they were watching the Barbie movie last week ... Oppenheimer.... maybe a Taylor Swift concert? There is no clear reason why the labor market, which looked like it was slowly loosening, appears to be tightening up again. There were a few states, like New York, that dropped a bit more than others last week, but we'd be grabbing at straws to say this has been anything but a June and July with relatively low joblessness. Hopes that the labor market was cooling are dimming.

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.