Jobless claims lowest since the winter of ’06

First time jobless claims dipped to 284,000 to the lowest weekly number since February 2006. This appears to be some good news for the continuing, yet anemic, 5 year recovery. However, some analysts believe that seasonal adjustment factors that can cause problems for the accuracy of these numbers, such as temporary shutdowns in the auto industry, will cause the trend to revert to back over 300,000 per week.

In any case, it does appear that employers are not shedding workers as much as the past few years at this point in the cycle, which is good news.