The essential econ series is Initial Claims of state processed unemployment insurance.

That the read has been unchanging for years now makes most complacent and ignore this series - big mistake.

Last week 18 in initial claims - I always use non seasonally adjusted (NSA) as Covid disruption is still impacting seasonally adjusted (SA) though that problem is diminishing - did rise a bit which could be the start of a serious rise in initial claims the always precedes a downturn in the economy. But with this week 19, that was shown to be not the case and initial claims made again, an astounding low. (It is hard to come up with a new form of the word “astounding” 100 times - the weeks this status has been reached so will stick with astounding.) Week 19 NSA has initial claims solidly below 200,000 to 197,000.

Astounding.