Jobless Claims Fall in Biggest Back-to-Back Drop Since September

215,000 down from the 222 initially reported last week. So we're back to the same sort of range that we were before. Now, of course, when you talk to Fed officials, and oddly enough, I've been doing that for the last three days, they're not particularly worried about the labor market right now. What they're watching is inflation. So as long as these numbers stay contained, the Fed's going to be happy. But it does show that the economy is still strong enough to keep the labor market in place. And that means they're not in any hurry to cut rates. The continuing claims #1,794,000. And that is down from 1,786,000. That's the revision from the week before the revision to last week's initial claims, 223. So no, no real change there from 2:22. So All in all, the labor market still seems to be about where it was. The jump two weeks ago was basically because New York State allows the school employee, these who are not teachers, to file for unemployment claims when they have vacations and they had the spring break. So everybody filed and that pushed the numbers up. Happens every year about this time. And now we're back down again. So it doesn't suggest at this point the numbers don't suggest that there's any real deterioration. Now, you talk to the Fed folks that I was talking to you down at the Atlanta Fed conference, and they're basically saying that what CEOs are telling them is they're not really hiring so much anymore. So it'll be really interesting to see what happens with the payrolls report. But they're not getting rid of people either because there's enough business that they need everybody they can get. And of course, they went through the scarring effects post pandemic of trying to find people. You know, Mike, you have just been spending a couple of days speaking with Fed officials. Do they have a dashboard of indicators of economic data points of which actually are the most reliable and how shifting whether basically they have, you know, this one count a little bit more today, will count jolts a little bit more because it's going to matter a little bit more today. Unemployment claims. I mean, how do we understand at what point this is a reliable metric that's really going to move the dial? Well, I don't think there's anyone metric that's going to move the dial. They did mention in the minutes yesterday that they are looking at services price, non housing, wages and inflation and try to see if if that goes down. That's a big contributor. They're watching goods price inflation because it started to go up again and now is looks like some deep disinflation. But one of the things they talked about was at the conference was the fact that they're following all kinds of data these days. And a lot of it is not the government data. They're looking at the private sector data on prices and unemployment, and they're just trying to make sense of it all. And no one number is what they're relying on. They're trying to get a comprehensive trend. Like also in the meeting minutes yesterday, we saw that many participants are questioning the restrictiveness that the Fed has on the economy. We haven't really heard that, though, from Jay Powell. What's your sense when you're speaking to them behind closed doors at these kind of conferences? Well, they're looking at what's going on in the economy, and they can see a restrictive impact on things like housing and auto prices and credit cards, obviously. But it's not it's not affecting Wall Street. And Wall Street keeps going up and up. So the financial conditions indexes start getting looser. It's sort of circular. Wall Street goes up, conditions go down, and Wall Street goes up again. But that does impart something of a wealth effect into the economy that they're trying to keep an eye on. And they're not seeing Americans slow down spending all that much. We saw weaker retail sales this last month, but that may be a seasonal effect because of Easter. We'll have to see what happens the in the in the next report. But if Americans keep spending even though they're not buying houses or cars, it tells you that maybe they're not restrictive enough. So they're watching that. Mike, I'd love to talk about some of these misconceptions with you. We had this Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian released in the last four hours. These numbers, Mike, are absolutely incredible. And if you just tune again, welcome to the program. I'll share them with you as well. 56% think the US is experiencing the recession. 49% believe the S&P 500 is down for the year. We're looking at all time highs in about an hour for now. 49% believe that unemployment is at A50 year high, even with jobless claims at 2:15 and unemployment under 4%. Where's it all coming from? It's something that political scientists in particular are trying to figure out because the Fed earlier this week released their 2023 consumer attitudes and 72% of people said they're doing just fine. Thank you very much. So everybody sees the problem as somebody else's, but they do see the problem as somebody else's, that there is a problem in the in the national economy. the Fed in the minutes talks about the fact that they think that people understand what they are doing and they just need to do more of it, keep talking about it. But obviously for the political people, this is a problem. The people are not seeing what's really happening out there.