New claims for unemployment benefits in the US increased last week, but the trend remains encouraging. The consensus forecast told us that claims would post a modest dip to a seasonally adjusted 270,000 in today’s release for the week through May 23; instead, filings jumped to 282,000, the US Labor Department reports. But the four-week average, which is close to a 15-year low, barely budged and the year-over-year change continues to fall at a healthy rate. In short, there’s not much news in today’s update, which means that this leading indicator continues to point to ongoing growth for the labor market.
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Earlier this week Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer laid out the conditions for raising interest rates. “The tightening of US policy,” he said in prepared remarks for a speech in Tel Aviv, “will begin only when the U.S. expansion has advanced far enough–when we have seen further improvement in the labor market and when we are reasonably confident that the inflation rate will rise to our 2 percent goal.”
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