Initial Jobless Claims down once again.

Initial Jobless Claims (week ended 5/4/2013)

– New Claims 323,000.  Previous was 324,000. This is the fewest number of weekly New Claims since January 2008 .

– 4-week Moving Average  336,750. Previous was 342,250.

– Unadjusted Claims totaled 298,497 a decrease of 2,638 from the previous week.

This data is positive for the economy but is not the entire employment picture.  The number of new jobless claims each month is only about 12% of the size of the number of people moving in or out of the jobs market. For example, the number of people who lose temporary jobs and are not eligible for unemployment is about 4 times the size of those eligible for unemployment.

Wholesale Trade (March 2013)

– Inventories Month/Month +0.4%. Previous was -0.3%.

This is the “I” component of the GDP formula GDP = C+I+G+(X-M).  It has the annoying habit of being bouncy because it needs to both anticipate retail sales and correct for any previous inaccuracies in trying to match inventories with sales.  Data for the past couple of months has been benign.