Thursday, December 5, 2024

The final Jobs Week of 2024 continues this morning, with Weekly Jobless Claims reporting mixed results, whether we’re looking at new claims or longer-term ones. Pre-market futures have not budged from prior to these new numbers hitting the tape, and at this hour, market indexes are rolling back those fresh all-time closing highs that have been the narrative of the week so far.

Initial Jobless Claims Tick Up, Continuing Claims Down

Initial Jobless Claims bumped up to +224K last week, the first time this print has gone above +220K since the first week of November. It’s up 9K from the previous week’s upwardly revised +215K from the previous week — but still representative of a healthy labor situation overall. (Recall two months ago, new jobless claims shot up temporarily to +260K for one week.)

Continuing Claims , on the other hand, dipped back below 1.9 million for the first time in three weeks: 1.87 million is lower than analysts had anticipated. That said, we remain on a higher tier that we haven’t seen for three years — up toward 2 million longer-term jobless claims. But even at that level — which, subtracting the Covid era, we hadn’t seen since 2016 — it’s not necessarily a cause for concern.

Trade Deficit Shrinks in October

The other economic report ahead of today’s opening bell in the U.S. Trade Balance , which has always posted a deficit for nearly 50 years, came in lighter than expected: -$73.8 billion, from the -$74.8 billion consensus estimate. It’s also better than the previous read, which reached a more than two-year low to -$84.4 billion, and the slimmest deficit since August of this year. Weaker oil prices are likely informing much of this deficit relief.

What to Expect from Friday’s Jobs Report