Labor Market

Initial Claims

Initial claims count people filing for unemployment insurance for the FIRST time each week, so it captures fresh job losses rather than the stock of unemployed. It is the highest-frequency labor signal available, published weekly against monthly payrolls, which is why it turns before almost anything else. The series is noisy week to week (holidays, auto-plant shutdowns, single-state filing quirks), so read the 4-week moving average. Sustained readings above roughly 300k have historically marked genuine labor-market deterioration.