Initial Jobless Claims: -67K to 847K vs. 875K consensus, 914K prior (revised from 900K).

 Initial Jobless Claims: -67K to 847K vs. 875K consensus, 914K prior (revised from 900K) for week ending 1/23/21.

-Four-week moving average for week ending Jan. 23 was 868K, up 16.25K from the previous week's average of 851.75K. Pandemic claims 427K down from 447k.
-Advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 3.4%, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the previous week's revised rate.
-The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 873.96K, an decrease of 101.4K (or 10.4%) from the previous week.
-Continuing jobless claims of 4.771M is down from 4.97M and lower than 5.05M consensus.

Mostly positive news from the claims report as initial claims as well as new pandemic claims both fall w/w. Because a 3.5% decrease was expected by the seasonals, the actual decrease was even better at a fall of 10.4% to 873K. Continuing claims, one week removed, fell again this week both SA and non-SA. The only two negatives are the overall very high level and the fact that that two week removed total of those rec'ing benefits ticked up by a large 2.3M to 18.3M.  A lot of work remains.