On Thursday, the U.S. Labor Department reported a slight decrease in first-time unemployment benefit claims for the week ending February 9th. According to the report, initial jobless claims fell to 209,000, marking a reduction of 1,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 210,000. This was contrary to economists' expectations, who had projected a rise in claims to 218,000 from the initially reported 217,000 for the previous week.
Additionally, the report noted a dip in the less volatile four-week moving average to 208,000, down 500 from the revised average of 208,500 from the preceding week. However, continuing claims, which monitor those receiving ongoing unemployment assistance, saw a rise by 17,000, reaching 1.811 million during the week ending March 2nd.
Lead U.S. Economist at Oxford Economics, Nancy Vanden Houten, stated that the week's jobless claims report featured annual revisions that didn't significantly impact previous initial claims data. However, revisions to continued claims were more impactful, smoothing out previous volatility and revising more recent claims downwards by over 100,000.
Based on the revised data for continued claims, Vanden Houten suggested the job market appears to be showing signs of loosening but remains relatively robust. Despite predictions of the Federal Reserve commencing rate cuts in May, she indicated that a healthy labor market and sticky inflation data could pose a risk to the timing of these cuts.
The Labor Department also released a separate employment report last Friday, detailing an unexpected rise in U.S. employment in February. In particular, non-farm payroll employment saw a surge of 275,000 jobs, exceeding economists' expectations of a 200,000 job increase.
Nevertheless, the report noted downward revisions in job growth for December and January, totaling a net downward revision of 167,000 jobs. The unemployment rate also recorded a climb to 3.9% in February, up from 3.7% in January, contrary to economists' expectations of an unchanged rate.
Lastly, the report indicated a slowdown in the annual wage growth rate to 4.3% in February, down from a revised 4.4% in January, in line with economists' projections of a slowdown to 4.4% from the 4.5% initially reported for the previous month.
