US Jobless Claims Continue To Fall

Jobless claims across the US fell last week for the third week in a row - down 2,000 claims from the week before now to 190,000 - despite the highly-publicized wave of layoffs that has been rippling through the tech industry of late.

Further, labor costs are up, which has been contributing in part to continuing inflationary pressure, while productivity is down. In fact, according to this piece in yahoo finance, labor costs rose more than 3 times their estimates during the fourth quarter of 2022, while productivity across 2022 as a whole was down 1.7% - the largest annual decline in productivity since the 1970s.