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Jobless Claims, Productivity & Earnings: What More Do You Want?
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Key Takeaways
Jobless Claims Remained in Favorable Territory
Q3 Productivity Was Up, Labor Costs Down
MA, CAT and VLO Beat on Earnings, LMT Missed
Thursday, January 29th, 2026
It’s a busy morning for data today, with Q4 earnings season continuing to heat up and Thursday Weekly Jobless Claims leading a train of economic data. Pre-market futures are currently in the green: the Dow +50 points, the S&P 500 +20, the Nasdaq +57 and the small-cap Russell 2000 +7 points at this hour.
Jobless Claims Down, but Inching Up
Initial Jobless Claims from last week are up from consensus expectations — 209K versus 205K estimated — but down slightly from the upwardly revised 210K the previous week. These are still historically very good figures for the labor market; as recently as early December, we were hitting 237K new jobless claims, but are now averaging 206K per week for the past six weeks.
Continuing Claims — as always, reported a week in arrears from new claims — sank to lows not seen in a year and a half: 1.827 million. From Memorial Day to Thanksgiving last year, longer-term jobless claims were between 1.9-1.974 million, but we’ve clearly taken a step back from there. More data from this set would be helpful, such as: how much of this lower number trend has to do with unemployed Americans seeing their longer-term jobless claims expire?
Productivity, Labor Costs & Trade Deficit
The final print on Q3 Productivity came in unaltered from the +4.9% previously reported. This remains the best quarter of U.S. productivity since Q3 of 2023, and may lead investors to wonder whether the onset of the AI revolution is already leading to higher productivity levels.
This goes double when we see the associated Unit Labor Costs remaining at -1.9%, where they were on the last print, and the lowest since -2.9% in Q2 of last year. Higher productivity and lower costs of labor are a recipe for a strong economy, but does this come at the expense of an entry-level work force?
The delayed report (November) for the U.S. Trade Deficit sank to its deepest trough since mid-summer: -$56.8 billion, from an improved -$29.2 billion the prior month. These figures are worlds better than the all-time low back in March of last year (directly ahead of the first tranche of global tariffs, which got rolled back after a week) of -$136.4 billion.
Pre-Market Earnings at a Glance: MA, CAT & More
Mastercard (MA - Free Report) posted a higher-than-expected earnings surprise of +13% this morning, with earnings of $4.76 versus $4.20 expected. The last earnings miss for the credit card giant was back in 2020, with a trailing four-quarter average beat of +3.1%.
Global heavy machinery company Caterpillar (CAT - Free Report) performed even better, with earnings of $5.16 per share posting a +10.5% positive surprise, on revenues of $19.13 billion, which amounted to a +6.6% surprise. For more on CAT’s earnings, click here.
Defense major Lockheed Martin (LMT - Free Report) registered its first negative earnings surprise since 2017 when it reported $5.80 per share versus expectations for $6.24. But shares are trading higher on a +9.1% gain on its top-line, with a record delivery of F-35 fighter jets in the quarter.
Oil refiner Valero (VLO - Free Report) posted the closest thing to a blowout quarter of the morning’s reporting companies: earnings of $3.82 per share on revenues of $30.37 billion outpaced expectations by +18.62% and +8.24%, respectively. For more on VLO’s earnings, click here.
Earnings Reports After the Close
Earnings season does not slow down. After today’s closing bell, we’ll see fiscal Q3 results from Apple (AAPL - Free Report) , which is expected to grow earnings per share by +10.4% and revenues +10.87%. The iPhone maker only has one earnings miss in the past five years.
Image: Bigstock
Jobless Claims, Productivity & Earnings: What More Do You Want?
Key Takeaways
Thursday, January 29th, 2026
It’s a busy morning for data today, with Q4 earnings season continuing to heat up and Thursday Weekly Jobless Claims leading a train of economic data. Pre-market futures are currently in the green: the Dow +50 points, the S&P 500 +20, the Nasdaq +57 and the small-cap Russell 2000 +7 points at this hour.
Jobless Claims Down, but Inching Up
Initial Jobless Claims from last week are up from consensus expectations — 209K versus 205K estimated — but down slightly from the upwardly revised 210K the previous week. These are still historically very good figures for the labor market; as recently as early December, we were hitting 237K new jobless claims, but are now averaging 206K per week for the past six weeks.
Continuing Claims — as always, reported a week in arrears from new claims — sank to lows not seen in a year and a half: 1.827 million. From Memorial Day to Thanksgiving last year, longer-term jobless claims were between 1.9-1.974 million, but we’ve clearly taken a step back from there. More data from this set would be helpful, such as: how much of this lower number trend has to do with unemployed Americans seeing their longer-term jobless claims expire?
Productivity, Labor Costs & Trade Deficit
The final print on Q3 Productivity came in unaltered from the +4.9% previously reported. This remains the best quarter of U.S. productivity since Q3 of 2023, and may lead investors to wonder whether the onset of the AI revolution is already leading to higher productivity levels.
This goes double when we see the associated Unit Labor Costs remaining at -1.9%, where they were on the last print, and the lowest since -2.9% in Q2 of last year. Higher productivity and lower costs of labor are a recipe for a strong economy, but does this come at the expense of an entry-level work force?
The delayed report (November) for the U.S. Trade Deficit sank to its deepest trough since mid-summer: -$56.8 billion, from an improved -$29.2 billion the prior month. These figures are worlds better than the all-time low back in March of last year (directly ahead of the first tranche of global tariffs, which got rolled back after a week) of -$136.4 billion.
Pre-Market Earnings at a Glance: MA, CAT & More
Mastercard (MA - Free Report) posted a higher-than-expected earnings surprise of +13% this morning, with earnings of $4.76 versus $4.20 expected. The last earnings miss for the credit card giant was back in 2020, with a trailing four-quarter average beat of +3.1%.
Global heavy machinery company Caterpillar (CAT - Free Report) performed even better, with earnings of $5.16 per share posting a +10.5% positive surprise, on revenues of $19.13 billion, which amounted to a +6.6% surprise. For more on CAT’s earnings, click here.
Defense major Lockheed Martin (LMT - Free Report) registered its first negative earnings surprise since 2017 when it reported $5.80 per share versus expectations for $6.24. But shares are trading higher on a +9.1% gain on its top-line, with a record delivery of F-35 fighter jets in the quarter.
Oil refiner Valero (VLO - Free Report) posted the closest thing to a blowout quarter of the morning’s reporting companies: earnings of $3.82 per share on revenues of $30.37 billion outpaced expectations by +18.62% and +8.24%, respectively. For more on VLO’s earnings, click here.
Earnings Reports After the Close
Earnings season does not slow down. After today’s closing bell, we’ll see fiscal Q3 results from Apple (AAPL - Free Report) , which is expected to grow earnings per share by +10.4% and revenues +10.87%. The iPhone maker only has one earnings miss in the past five years.
Visa (V - Free Report) , which never misses on earnings, is expected to report +14.18% earnings growth from a year ago on +12.5% in higher revenues. That said, its average earnings beat over the last four quarters is only +2.7%.
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