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New unemployment claims come in below 1M for the first time since March

During the week ending August 8th, 963,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Yahoo Finance’s Emily McCormick joins The First Trade with Alexis Christoforous and Brian Sozzi to discuss.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: An encouraging sign for the labor market this morning. The government says 963,000 Americans filed for first time unemployment benefits in the latest week. This is the first time that number has come in below a million since pandemic induced lockdowns began in March.

Let's take a look at stock Futures on this news. They were lower earlier. They have now turned mostly higher. We've got Dow Futures up 12.

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NASDAQ Futures rallying 64 and S&P Futures up about three points. So we know the S&P closed yesterday a stone's throw away from a new all-time high. We have Emily McCormick standing by for more on this latest report involving the labor market. Emily, what else can you tell us?

EMILY MCCORMICK: Well, good morning, Alexis. And as you mentioned earlier, really the labor market crossing an important milestone this morning. We had the Labor Department's weekly unemployment insurance claims coming in below the one million mark for the first time since March. So the first time that we've seen this number improve to below that one million mark in this pandemic period.

So to reiterate that headline figure, we had initial jobless claims for the week ended August 8 coming in at 963,000. That was below the 1.1 million that had been expected and the 1.2 million from the prior week. Taking a look at those continuing unemployment insurance claims for the week ended August 1, those were at about 15 and a 1/2 million, also better than the 15.8 million expected and the 16.1 million from the prior week. So that was also a pandemic era low on the continuing claims side.

Now taking a look here from the week ended March 20, we now have more than 56 million Americans who have filed for new first time unemployment insurance claims. So still seeing a staggering and historic number if we think about this tally as a whole, as well as on that continuing claims side, of course, with tens of millions of Americans still out of work. Now taking a look at those first time unemployment insurance claims across states, nearly every state across the country did report a decline in new claims last week on in unadjusted basis.

We have Florida's new jobless claims improving by 23,000 last week for the largest drop of any state. We did have New York state following closely behind with 22,000 fewer new claims filed last week than the week prior. Now we didn't have a huge reaction here in the Futures market.

Taking a look at those equity Futures, still hovering around the flat line. The S&P 500 and Dow Futures have been slightly below that flatline, now popping slightly above. So a muted market reaction here, but again, an important report that we've seen from the Labor Department this morning.