Another Terrible Jobless Claims Report

We got another jobless-claims report and it was another bad one. All told, 5.245 million Americans signed up for first-time jobless claims. Also, last week’s figure was revised higher a bit. That brings the four-week total to 22 million. The key question is how many people will be rehired once the economy reopens.

The total was a bit worse than the 5 million expected from economists surveyed by Dow Jones.

Though the most recent count, for the week ended April 11, represented a drop from the previous two weeks, it showed that the damage to the U.S. labor market remains profound.

“As we fully know the current state of the labor market with mass waves of layoffs, the key question turns to how many of these people will be rehired when the economy starts to reopen,” said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at the Bleakley Group. “We can assume it will take a long time for that to happen but hopefully we’re getting closer to at least getting started.”

The S&P 500 is up a little bit today. We’re close to having our highest close since March 9.

Posted by on April 16th, 2020 at 1:46 pm


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