A few hours ago, the Labor Department reported that jobless claims fell by 30,000 filings last week, sending a dose of optimism into the market.
But suspicions abound about the drop’s accuracy, and now news agencies like CNBC are reporting that a Labor Department spokesperson suggested one large state represented a significant portion of the drop in claims. Yet, no one has provided information on the state in question.
Paul Ashworth, chief economist for Capital Economics, told HousingWire, it’s hard to pinpoint what caused the filings to drop, but he’s not ruling anything out yet.
“These are weekly figures, and they bounce around all over the place for all sorts of reasons,” he said.
Ashworth added that economists do not draw conclusions from one week of data.
“We treat these figures with so much caution,” he explained.
