Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as UK supermarkets hand back £1.7bn of tax relief after criticism
- Latest: US jobless claims fell last week
- Asda to hand back £340m
- Aldi to repay £100m
- Introduction: Sainsbury’s waives £440m business rates relief
- Follows Tesco and Morrisons yesterday
- But Co-op and John Lewis have no plans….
The drop in US unemployment claims may be due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
Last week’s break will have meant less time for states to receive and process jobless claims (and also leads to temporary swings in the labor market).
Normal holiday hiring swings and anticipated seasonal furloughs in certain sectors like construction or retail could muddy the data on the extent of economic damage as COVID-19 cases rise. The tea leaves will be hard to decipher these next few months.
Tomorrow’s jobs report could expose deeper cracks in the recovery resulting from the recent surge in pandemic cases. While a repeat of the spring crash is unlikely, it revealed how quickly economic damage can accumulate. Promising vaccine news offers a light at the end of the tunnel, which makes it all the more important that Congress helps the economy hold onto gains made to-date. We don’t want to trip over our own feet with the finish line in sight.”
UI claims fell to just over 1 million (714K UI initial claims NSA + 289K PUA claims) last wk due to the holiday wk.
The slowdown is likely due to a Thanksgiving lull though it was still not enough to drive claims below the 1M mark; 37th straight wk above 1M.#joblessclaims 1/ pic.twitter.com/iqKvvLIDzg
Initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits fell last week to 712,000 from 787,000 revised. But this reflects the Thanksgiving holiday period more than anything else. https://t.co/v9IXSHH9Zp
Finally, a better-than-exp result for initial unempl claims. But don’t get too excited, 712k is still 3.4X times more than pre-virus levels. Let’s hope tomorrow’s employment report is also better than exp. pic.twitter.com/J8QGlYGiqa
The number of Americans receiving unemployment support for at least a fortnight also fell.
The continuing claims total dropped to 5.52m in the week to November 21, from 6.08m the previous seven days.
Initial jobless claims down to 712k vs. 775k est. & 787k in prior week (rev. up); continuing claims at 5.52M vs. 5.8M est. & 6.089M in prior week (rev. up) … greatest increases in IL (+18,8k), MI (+17.3k) & WA (+13.5k); greatest decreases in LA (-33.6k), MA (-22.6k) & NJ (-783) pic.twitter.com/ipK5KMksJR