US Jobless Claims Fall to 199,000 With Christmas Week Volatility

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Transcript

00:00What do you make of this? Matt's point that we've seen unemployment claims basically at the same

00:05place for almost a year. Right. So, you know, as you said, we're not seeing signs of deterioration

00:13in the labor market. Like the layoffs have not picked up in a way that that was the downside

00:18risk that the Fed has been very acute to. And we haven't seen that. So so we're not seeing the bad

00:24news story. Frankly, we still need to see some good news in the labor market. So the claims don't

00:30get at the piece that's really been sticky. And that's that the hiring rate has been quite low.

00:35So, yes, good news on the continuing claims for this week, but they are still quite elevated.

00:40And so we need we need a little bit more of the good news. But, you know, the fact that the layoffs

00:45have not shown up despite, you know, a lot of layoff announcements like we're not seeing them

00:51in terms of actual layoffs. And that's good news. Claudia, do you take anything from the idea

00:55that continuing claims came in to some of the lowest levels that we've seen going back

00:59about a month? Not significant. And they are elevated, as you've said. But

01:03does that indicate that people are actually finding work?

01:08It's possible. I you know, these are while the claims data are very timely. I mean, we get a quick

01:14read. We have to be careful around the turn of the year. There's it's just really tricky with the

01:19holidays. And, you know, just reading these data is much harder at the turn of the year

01:23than, say, in the middle of the year. But but it is it is potentially a good sign. And what we're

01:29looking for are signs of more stability in the labor market, signs that those the hiring rates

01:36start to pick off a pickup off their very low levels. So this is encouraging. But this doesn't

01:41make the case yet. Right. We need to see it in the hiring data.