Weekly Unemployment Claims (every Thursday)
We had three morning economic releases today, starting with last week’s unemployment update at 8:30 AM ET. It revealed 222,000 new claims for benefits were made, down from the previous week’s revised 232,000. Declining claims are good news for mortgage rates, but the 222,000 was a tad higher than expectations. Because of the good and bad in the number and the fact it is just a weekly snapshot, we are considering the report to be neutral for rates.