Initial Jobless Claims Refuse To Signal Labor Market Stress

Following the impressive payrolls data (revisions aside), the number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time fell to 227k last week (down from 232k – which was a notable jump)…

Continuing jobless claims ticked up from their lowest since May 2024…

Finally, WTF is going on in the labor market – Payrolls beat (but revisions were ugly), JOLTs are tumbling, Surveys suggest a tough labor market (jobs hard to get far worse than jobs plentiful), but… initial jobless claims remain flat near multi-decade lows?

Which is weird because before 2019, the two time series sync’d up very well – as one would expect…

Should we just be ignoring surveys completely now?