Weekly Unemployment Claims (every Thursday)
This morning’s first piece of economic data was last week’s unemployment figures that showed 547,000 new claims for benefits were filed. That fell short of the 600,000 that was expected and was down from the previous week’s revised 586,000 initial filings. It also was the lowest number since the pandemic started. Declining claims is a sign that the employment sector strengthened during the week, making the data bad news for bonds and mortgage rates. Fortunately, this is only a weekly update that has lost some of its influence it had during the height of the pandemic, minimizing the negative impact on this morning’s rates.