Continuing Claims Just Hit Their Lowest Since January 2024. Nobody Is Getting Fired.

The Labor Department's weekly claims release on Thursday, September 17 carried the single most important labor number of the week, and it was not the headline. Initial claims for the week ending September 12 fell 10,000 to 196,000, the lowest since July. The figure that matters more, continuing claims for the week ending September 5, dropped 39,000 to 1.730 million. That is the lowest level for insured unemployment since January 2024, and it landed on the same week the insured unemployment rate fell to 1.1 percent, its first decline since the week of April 25.

Put that beside the payroll surveys and you get a genuine contradiction. The August Employment Situation report, released September 4,…