A pretty reasonable take (courtesy of Michael Feroli of JPMorgan Chase) on today's initial jobless-claims numbers:
On the heels of some quite weak data, today's jobless claims figure had the potential to provide a knock-out blow to the economic outlook. In the event, the initial jobless claims number of 356,000 was neither here nor there: by no means was this a good number—particularly with continuing claims moving up to 2.785 million claimants—at the same time it did not depict a decisive break for the worse. Instead, today's number was consistent with a soft, but not collapsing, jobs market.
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