why jobless claims matter to investors
markets may react strongly to a mid month jobless claims report particularly if it shows a difference from the cumulative evidence of other recent indicators for instance if other indicators show a weakening economy a surprise drop in jobless claims could slow down equity sellers and could actually lift stocks sometimes this happens simply because there isn t any other recent data to chew on at the time a favorable initial jobless claims report may also get lost in the shuffle of a busy news day and hardly be noticed by wall street jobless claims are also used as inputs for the creation of models and indicators for example average weekly initial jobless claims are one of the 10 components of the conference board s composite index of leading indicators 5