Why Are Jobless Claims Still Near Multi-Decade Lows While Payroll Growth Cools?

Weekly initial claims rose to 200,000 for the week ending November 7, up 9,000 from the prior week's 191,000, according to Labor Department data released Thursday morning. The headline jump looks like a crack in a labor market that has spent the year printing historically low claims. The context underneath it points somewhere more subtle: the four-week moving average came in at 195,250, still about 14 percent below the 228,000 reading from a year earlier, and continuing claims held near 1.70 million. Claims are not breaking. They are levelling off at a floor that any labor economist of the last three decades would call tight.

The more interesting tension is between that floor and the payroll…