Initial Claims
The headline initial claims number fell 6k compared to last week's revised claims to 388k. Last week's number was revised up 12k to 394k, so this week's headline is 6k higher than last week's headline print. Rolling claims rose 4k to 391k. On a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, reported claims were flat WoW.
We have been looking for claims in the 375-400k range as the level that can begin to bring unemployment down. If this level is held, we expect to see unemployment improve. We consider unemployment to be ~200 bps higher than the headline rate due to decreases in the labor force participation rate. In other words, if the labor force participation rate were at the long-term average level of the last decade, unemployment rate would be 10.9% rather than 8.9%. So when we say that claims of 375-400k will start to bring down the unemployment rate, we are actually referring to the 10.9% actual rate.
One of our astute clients pointed out the relationship between the S&P and initial claims shown below. We show the two series in the following chart, with initial claims inverted on the left axis.
Yield Curve Remains Wide
We chart the 2-10 spread as a proxy for NIM. Thus far the spread in 1Q is tracking 40 bps wider than 4Q. The current level of 266 bps is tighter than last week (271 bps).
Financial Subsector Performance
The table below shows the stock performance of each Financial subsector over four durations.
Joshua Steiner, CFA
Allison Kaptur