Weekly Unemployment Claims (every Thursday)
Last week’s unemployment update was the first of today’s three economic releases. The figures showed that 250,000 new claims for benefits were filed last week, down slightly from the previous week’s revised 252,000 initial filings. A downward revision to the previous week’s number has last week’s claims lower than expected. However, the week over week change was in line with forecasts. Since this is just a weekly snapshot and the variance was minor, the report had little impact on this morning’s bond trading and mortgage pricing.