This week’s jobless claims numbers had 19 states omitted from the data, including California and Texas. While the data is positive with initial jobless claims falling 11k to 350k from 361k, we wouldn’t put too much faith in this data and would wait and see what next week’s numbers hold. Hurricane Sandy is no longer affecting the numbers and claims are generally trending lower, the latter of which is a tailwind we should expect to continue through February.
