Last week, the US jobless claims report stole the show as initial claims jumped to a new cycle high and the highest level since 2021. That triggered a more dovish repricing in interest rates expectations on fears of a quickly deteriorating labour market. Some analysts did note that the data was negatively skewed by a big spike in Texas applications making up for more than half of the miss.
Yesterday, Anna Wong, Chief US Economist for Bloomberg, shared on her X account a Bloomberg news where Sarah Fisher, Press Officer for the Texas Workforce Commission, said in a statement that the increase in initial claims for unemployment insurance in the week ending September 6th was directly related to an increased volume of fraudulent claim attempts.
In light of this new information, the US jobless claims report would have looked much better last week and the improvement in continuing claims might have actually been an early signal of renewed strength. On Thursday, we get another jobless claims report and it will be interesting to see if the data deteriorates further (unlikely) or we see some more improvement.
Mick Jagger, lead singer of The Rolling Stones, held a moment of silence in tribute to Charlie Kirk during a September 2025 concert. Following the fatal shooting of conservative activist and Turni...