Weekly Unemployment Claims (every Thursday)
The first of this morning’s two relevant economic reports came at 8:30 AM ET when last week’s unemployment figures were posted. They revealed 231,000 new claims for unemployment benefits were made last week, down from the previous week’s revised 264,000. Analysts were expecting to see a numbers around 240,000. Since declining weekly claims are a sign of strength in the employment sector and the number of new filings was lower than thought, we have to label the report bad news for bonds and mortgage rates.