Name: Jobless claims trend hits lowest in nearly two years
Uploaded: 2026-01-15T15:43:20.859Z
Duration: 3 min 17 s
Description: Initial jobless claims in the United States for the week of January 10th reached 198,000, falling below the 200,000 mark and marking the lowest trend in nearly two years.

Initial jobless claims in the United States for the week of January 10th reached 198,000, falling below the 200,000 mark and marking the lowest trend in nearly two years.

Initial jobless claims in the United States for the week of January 10th reached 198,000, falling below the 200,000 mark and marking the lowest trend in nearly two years. Continuing claims for the week ending January 3rd were reported at 1,884,000, close to expectations and slightly down from the previous week.

Additional economic indicators showed import prices up 0.1% year-over-year and export prices up 3.3%, with manufacturing indexes in both the Empire and Philadelphia regions surpassing expectations. The report also noted a slight increase in interest rates and muted reactions in equity markets, while Federal Reserve policy expectations remain unchanged.

Jobless claims trend hits lowest in nearly two years

Welcome back to Squawk Box, Rick Santella here live at CME HQ with the breaking news on this Friday eve. If we look at what's going on with regard to import-export prices, that might be a good place to start. If we're looking at import prices on a year-over-year basis, it's up one-tenth, up one-tenth. That's very close to expectations. And if you look at export prices year-over-year, they're up 3.3 percent, 3.3, and actually is the lowest since it was 3.2 in August, but I do caution, like many numbers we've had of late, there isn't previous months yet that are out there, October, so it's hard to do comps. Now, let's look at Philly and Empire. I don't see claims out yet. Empire Manufacturing, this is a January number, expecting a positive number of one, comes out 7.7, much better than expected, but in November we were over 18, to give you a comp. And on Philly Business Outlook, we're looking at a minus number, small, comes out 12.6. So a mirror image of what we're expecting, a pretty strong number, 12.6 would be the best since it was 19 and change in September. And finally, we're populating on claims, under 200 on initial claims for the week of January 10th. 198,000. 198,000. Now, we have had some sub-200s, some of them revised away, but one still stands. That was last week in November when it was 192,000. These numbers are getting very close to going back into kind of the Beatles era in terms of how low they are. And finally, on the continuing claims side, that's for the week of January 3rd ending. It comes in at 1,884,000. That is very close to expectations, and it follows a slightly revised 1,903 that was downgraded by about 11,000. How did all of that affect the markets? Well, we are seeing a slight increase, a slight increase in interest rates, and maybe that's because claims continue to be well-behaved. I'm not sure exactly why, to be honest. Is it the no hire, no fire? Is it that maybe there was a lot of erroneous number of people that were on this that have been taken off the ranks? I can't tell you. Pre-opening equities, they're not so enamored with it. We see we've gotten a little bit more red in the Dow futures, down about 43. Nothing horrible. It was down about 30 before the number. We still want to monitor what's going on with all the fallout from the Fed. It doesn't seem to have affected any of the markets. It certainly hasn't affected the percentages. We had the Beige Book yesterday, and even though a lot of the phrasing there was slightly to modestly better, whether it was growth or whether it was the wage side of the equation, ultimately, the percentages are single digit for the January meeting, unless something dramatic happens, won't look for any easing in the January 27th and 28th. As a matter of fact, there's some out there calling for no easing this year at all. Andrew, back to you.

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