Jobless Claims Data Goes From The Sublime To The Ridiculous!!

As a reminder, in the real world labor market, 2024 has been a shitshow of layoffs...

1. Everybuddy: 100% of workforce
2. Wisense: 100% of workforce
3. CodeSee: 100% of workforce
4. Twig: 100% of workforce
5. Twitch: 35% of workforce
6. Roomba: 31% of workforce
7. Bumble: 30% of workforce
8. Farfetch: 25% of workforce
9. Away: 25% of workforce
10. Hasbro: 20% of workforce
11. LA Times: 20% of workforce
12. Wint Wealth: 20% of workforce
13. Finder: 17% of workforce
14. Spotify: 17% of workforce
15. Buzzfeed: 16% of workforce
16. Levi's: 15% of workforce
17. Xerox: 15% of workforce
18. Qualtrics: 14% of workforce
19. Wayfair: 13% of workforce
20. Duolingo: 10% of workforce
21. Rivian: 10% of workforce
22. Washington Post: 10% of workforce
23. Snap: 10% of workforce
24. eBay: 9% of workforce
25. Sony Interactive: 8% of workforce
26. Expedia: 8% of workforce
27. Business Insider: 8% of workforce
28. Instacart: 7% of workforce
29. Paypal: 7% of workforce
30. Okta: 7% of workforce
31. Charles Schwab: 6% of workforce
32. Docusign: 6% of workforce
33. Riskified: 6% of workforce
34. EA: 5% of workforce
35. Motional: 5% of workforce
36. Mozilla: 5% of workforce
37. Vacasa: 5% of workforce
38. CISCO: 5% of workforce
39. UPS: 2% of workforce
40. Nike: 2% of workforce
41. Blackrock: 3% of workforce
42. Paramount: 3% of workforce
43. Citigroup: 20,000 employees
44. ThyssenKrupp: 5,000 employees
45. Best Buy: 3,500 employees
46. Barry Callebaut: 2,500 employees
47. Outback Steakhouse: 1,000
48. Northrop Grumman: 1,000 employees
49. Pixar: 1,300 employees
50. Perrigo: 500 employees

But, according to the government-supplied data...

The number of American filing for jobless benefits for the first time last week dropped to 209k (vs 218k exp) with the NSA number tumbling to 200k...

Source: Bloomberg

How is this possible, you may ask... well let us show you the ways... New York State claims that its jobless benefits rolls collapsed last week. New York accounted for 99.75% of the weekly change in initial claims across the entire US as shown below...

Source: Bloomberg

Continuing Claims was a shit show - with a massive 112k person downward revision for last week from 1.906 million to 1.794mm. That is the 5th straight weekly downward revision of continuing claims...

Source: Bloomberg

But thanks to the adjustments, it all looks 'normal' and 'stable' at around 1.8 million Americans...

Source: Bloomberg

And WARN numbers are rising rapidly...

Source: Bloomberg

As a reminder, if you doubt the accuracy of the Biden admin's data, here's what the most recent FOMC Minutes said:

"While the recent trends prior to the meeting had been remarkably positive, Fed officials judged that some of the recent improvement “reflected idiosyncratic movements in a few series.”

Even they aren't buying it, and neither should you!