The ADP private sector payroll report came out with an estimate of 176,000 private sector jobs created in June. That’ll be a solid, if not stellar, month if something like that is confirmed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics tomorrow. At a minimum it’s way above expectations and should generate some enthusiasm in markets.
We also got a good initial unemployment claims report indicating that 374,000 people filed new UI claims last week, “a decrease of 14,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 388,000. The 4-week moving average was 385,750, a decrease of 1,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 387,250.” The year-over-year change in initial claims has been persistently negative for a while, the clearest sign of steady (albeit slow) improvement in the American labor market.
