U.S. Initial Jobless Claims Fell To 242k as per Labor Department

• This is a significant drop of 22,000 from the previous week’s total.
• The Federal Reserve embarks on its most aggressive interest rate hiking campaign.

The number of persons making new claims for unemployment benefits each week fell to 242,000 from the previous week’s 264,000, according to figures released by the Department of Labor on Thursday. This is a significant drop of 22,000 from the previous week’s total.

Claims from those who have been collecting unemployment benefits for more than a week fell to 1.799 million in the week ending May 6 from a revised 1.807 million the previous week. However, experts predicted that the latest initial claims report would show a seasonally adjusted total of 254,000 and that the continuing claims report would show a total of 1.818 million.

Slight Fumble in the Markets

As the Federal Reserve embarks on its most aggressive interest rate hiking campaign since the 1980s, it is keeping a close eye on the state of the labor market. There have been signs of a slowdown, but the job market is still quite competitive, with 1.6 open positions for every person who was jobless in March.

On Thursday, U.S. equities dropped as stronger-than-expected unemployment claims contributed to worries of an impending recession in the aftermath of fresh macroeconomic data. During the course of this writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 108 points (0.35%), the S&P 500 lost 0.12%, and the NASDAQ Composite lost 0.08%.

Moreover, there was also a little drop in the value of cryptocurrencies. At this time, Bitcoin can be purchased for $27,153, down 0.19 percent in the previous 1 hour and 1.50 percent higher than its price 24 hours ago.