Jobless Claims Worse Than Expected

After revising last week's initial jobless claims level up by 14K, this week's claims report showed a drop of 5K to 359K, which was 9K above forecasts.  This week's higher than expected claims number was a bit out of the norm for investors who have become accustomed to better than expected numbers on the jobs front.  Prior to today, there had only been one worse than expected report over the last eight weeks.

With the upward revision to last week's number, the four week moving average also moved up to 365K, which is still only 10K above the recent low.

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, jobless claims were unchanged at 319K.  For this particular week in March, this week's reading is the lowest since 2007, and below the historical average of 354K.

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