Pre-market futures are higher again this morning, looking to put together a string of session wins to get a new month started in the right direction. The Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 are all trading up in the early market, and higher than they were prior to economic prints released an hour before the open:
Initial Jobless Claims for last week came in at 215K — 10K under expectations and -18K from the previous week’s upwardly revised 233K. This is the lowest one-week read we’ve seen since the first of the year; the Omicron variant hampered the labor force for much of the first two months of the year.
Continuing Claims came in at 1.476 million, a smidge above the previous week’s cycle-low 1.474 million. This represents pre-Covid levels of long-term unemployment; in fact, these numbers are the lowest we’ve seen since 1970 — more than 50 years ago. When tomorrow’s Employment Situation report from the U.S. government comes out, we’ll get another look at just how robust this labor market is.
The final revision to Q4 Productivity came in 10 basis points lower than expectations, but equating the previous read to +6.6% — still a very strong level for quarterly productivity. The highest point we’ve seen came only two quarters earlier, in Q2 2021, when Productivity reached +11%. This was pre-Omicron and pre-Delta variants of Covid, back when the Great Reopening first got its head of steam.
The associated Q4 Unit Labor Costs, on the other hand, were revised way up to +0.9% from +0.3% expected and reported in the previous revision. This is not usually the sort of thing we see: a final revision tripling the headline figure. Yet it does stack up to other wage growth data we’ve seen as the Reopening continues. Again, we’ll check wage growth in tomorrow’s employment report.
Fed Chair Jay Powell spends his second day speaking on Capitol Hill today; his nod toward a 25 basis-point (bps) rate hike instead of 50 bps the market had begun to bake into the cake sent market participants into a buying mood. Today he’ll answer questions pertaining to inflation, of course, and whether a smaller rate hike will be sufficient.
Quite possibly, Powell will bring up the potential of a yield-curve inversion on the horizon as one of the reasons to go slower in rate hikes, near term. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has complicated global economic growth matters, and we had been seeing a distinct flattening of the yield curve — still the best predictor of recessions — since the tanks rolled across the border a week ago. Yesterday, after Powell’s statement, the 10-year rate ramped up its highest one-day move in two years.
Pre-markets are feeling their oats at the moment: the Dow has moved from +65 points prior to econ reports to over +200 points ahead of the bell; the S&P and Nasdaq, which were both +10 an hour ago, are now trading at +135 and +33 points, respectively. We’ll see if anything Powell says today moves the needle again.
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Weekly Jobless Claims Drop to 2-Month Low
Pre-market futures are higher again this morning, looking to put together a string of session wins to get a new month started in the right direction. The Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 are all trading up in the early market, and higher than they were prior to economic prints released an hour before the open:
Initial Jobless Claims for last week came in at 215K — 10K under expectations and -18K from the previous week’s upwardly revised 233K. This is the lowest one-week read we’ve seen since the first of the year; the Omicron variant hampered the labor force for much of the first two months of the year.
Continuing Claims came in at 1.476 million, a smidge above the previous week’s cycle-low 1.474 million. This represents pre-Covid levels of long-term unemployment; in fact, these numbers are the lowest we’ve seen since 1970 — more than 50 years ago. When tomorrow’s Employment Situation report from the U.S. government comes out, we’ll get another look at just how robust this labor market is.
The final revision to Q4 Productivity came in 10 basis points lower than expectations, but equating the previous read to +6.6% — still a very strong level for quarterly productivity. The highest point we’ve seen came only two quarters earlier, in Q2 2021, when Productivity reached +11%. This was pre-Omicron and pre-Delta variants of Covid, back when the Great Reopening first got its head of steam.
The associated Q4 Unit Labor Costs, on the other hand, were revised way up to +0.9% from +0.3% expected and reported in the previous revision. This is not usually the sort of thing we see: a final revision tripling the headline figure. Yet it does stack up to other wage growth data we’ve seen as the Reopening continues. Again, we’ll check wage growth in tomorrow’s employment report.
Fed Chair Jay Powell spends his second day speaking on Capitol Hill today; his nod toward a 25 basis-point (bps) rate hike instead of 50 bps the market had begun to bake into the cake sent market participants into a buying mood. Today he’ll answer questions pertaining to inflation, of course, and whether a smaller rate hike will be sufficient.
Quite possibly, Powell will bring up the potential of a yield-curve inversion on the horizon as one of the reasons to go slower in rate hikes, near term. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has complicated global economic growth matters, and we had been seeing a distinct flattening of the yield curve — still the best predictor of recessions — since the tanks rolled across the border a week ago. Yesterday, after Powell’s statement, the 10-year rate ramped up its highest one-day move in two years.
Pre-markets are feeling their oats at the moment: the Dow has moved from +65 points prior to econ reports to over +200 points ahead of the bell; the S&P and Nasdaq, which were both +10 an hour ago, are now trading at +135 and +33 points, respectively. We’ll see if anything Powell says today moves the needle again.