MACRO: US jobless claims recorded first drop in four weeks

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell last week, which indicates that the US job market and economy continue their steady recovery from last year's coronavirus recession.

Initial filings for unemployment benefits totaled 326k for the week ended Oct. 2, which is a drop from the previous week’s 364k. Today's reading came in below analysts' estimates of 348k. Continuing claims for state benefits fell to 2.7 million in the week ended Sept. 25. The number of claims is heading towards September low of 312k as the labour market continued to show signs of recovery and as impacts related to Hurricane Ida and the Delta variant's summer spike started to fade.

Initial jobless claims last week fell to 326k, breaking a sequence of three straight weekly gains.  Source: Bloomberg via ZeroHedge.

Also the number of US citizens who are receiving benefits under all programs dropped to just  4.74 million, in the week ending Sept 18, down from 5 million a week prior. Last year, this number stood at 24.6 million.

The total number of people receiving some kind of unemployment benefit returned below 12 million. Source: Bloomberg via ZeroHedge

The release of the weekly jobless claims report comes a day ahead of the release of the Labor Department's more closely watched monthly jobs report on Friday. Yesterday's data from ADP Research Institute showed US businesses added more jobs than forecast in September. If the NFP reading will also surprise positively, then this may cement the case for the Fed's slowing of asset purchases.  

It should be remembered that in the last two weeks about 7 million citizens have lost benefits and will now be looking for work. However these numbers will not be included into the nonfarm payrolls count on Friday. Therefore the next NFP report, which will be published in a month, may also trigger greater volatility in the markets.