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Something strange has been happening with jobless claims numbers lately

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A “Now Hiring” sign is displayed on a shopfront on October 21, 2022 in New York City.

Leonardo Munoz | View Press | Corbis News | Getty Images

Calling the state of the U.S. jobs market these days stable seems like an understatement considering the latest data coming out of the Labor Department.

That’s because most of the past several weeks have shown that first-time claims for unemployment benefits haven’t fluctuated at all — as in zero.

For five of the past six weeks, the level of initial jobless filings totaled exactly 212,000. Given a labor force that is 168 million strong, achieving such stasis seems at least unusual if not uncanny, yet that is what the figures released each Thursday morning since mid-March have shown.

The consistency has raised a few eyebrows on Wall Street. The only week that varied was March 30, with 222,000.

“How is this statistically possible? Five of the last six weeks, the exact same number,” market veteran Jim Bianco, head of Bianco Research, posted Thursday on X.

“Initial claims for unemployment insurance are state programs, with 50 state rules, hundreds of offices, and 50 websites to file. Weather, seasonality, holidays, and economic vibrations drive the number of people filing claims from week to week,” he added. “Yet this measure is so stable that it does not vary by even 1,000 applications a week.”

Others chimed in as well.

“Numbers made up,” one participant on the thread opined, while another said, “Someone’s cooking the books.”

However, others offered more analytical thoughts, attributing the uniformity in data to seasonal adjustments. Tracey Ryniec, a strategist at Zacks Investment Research, suggested: “You can go look at each state Jim. Those vary greatly.”

Indeed, a Labor Department spokesperson noted that while the string of 212,000 prints on the jobless claims data is “uncommon,” it would not be considered anomalous.

The streak “can be reasonably interpreted as an indication that there has been very little volatility in initial claims over this period relative to historical patterns, and that the seasonal adjustment factors are effectively removing seasonality from the aggregate figures reported by states,” the official said.

Moreover, claims not adjusted seasonally have shown substantial fluctuation during the five-week period, registering readings of 202,722; 191,772; 193,921; 197,349; 215,265 and 208,509.

Federal Reserve officials watch the weekly claims numbers as part of their broader assessment of the labor market, which has shown surprising resilience as the central bank has tightened monetary policy.

The Labor Department official also pointed out that new seasonal factors to the claims data were announced a month ago.

“Using the new seasonal adjustment factors, initial claims have been at a fairly consistent level since around mid-September 2023 and even more so since the start of February 2024,” the spokesperson said.

The jobs report is the single most important set of numbers for the stock market, says Jim Cramer

Economics

Elon Musk says Trump’s spending bill undermines the work DOGE has been doing

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025.

Hamad I Mohammed | Reuters

Elon Musk criticized the Republican spending bill that recently made it through a House vote, saying it counters the work he’s been doing to reduce wasteful government spending.

In an interview to be aired June 1 on “CBS Sunday Morning,” the richest man in the world and the head of the Department of Government Efficiency advisory board said the “big, beautiful bill” will not help the nation’s finances.

“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in a clip the program shared on social media platform X.

DOGE says it has saved $170 billion in taxpayer money since it began in January, targeting areas of government waste and redundancy in sometimes-controversial ways.

For instance, it has gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development and reduced staff elsewhere. DOGE-related moves have been responsible for some 275,000 government layoffs, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a consultancy firm.

The sweeping One Big Beautiful Bill Act by contrast, is projected to raise the federal budget deficit by $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The deficit is on track in 2025 to run close to $2 trillion, with the national debt now at $36.2 trillion.

“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful, but I don’t know if it could be both,” Musk said in the clip.

Trump and congressional Republicans counter that the bill reduces spending in key areas and will generate enough growth to compensate for the tax reductions. The legislation, though, is expected to face strong resistance in the Senate.

For his part, Musk has pulled back his DOGE work, saying he plans to focus on running his companies, which include X, Tesla and SpaceX. Musk had been a frequent presence in the White House since Trump’s election.

In an interview with The Washington Post published Tuesday, Musk said the federal bureaucracy is “much worse than I realized” and that DOGE became “the whipping boy for everything.”

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Economics

How young voters helped to put Trump in the White House

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THE 2024 election unfolded like a political thriller, replete with a last-minute candidate change, backroom deals, a cover-up, assassination attempts and ultimately the triumphant return of a convicted felon. But amidst the spectacle, a quieter transformation unfolded. For the first time, millennials and Gen Z, people born between 1981 and 2006, comprised a plurality of the electorate, and their drift towards Donald Trump shaped the outcome.

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Economics

Trump hails ‘positive’ step in U.S.-EU trade talks as markets await deal

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U.S. President Donald Trump gestures at the annual National Memorial Day Observance in the Memorial Amphitheater, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., May 26, 2025.

Ken Cedeno | Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday he welcomed the European Union, after he agreed to delay a 50% tariff on goods from the bloc until July 9.

“I have just been informed that the E.U. has called to quickly establish meeting dates,” Trump wrote in a post on the Truth Social platform.

“This is a positive event, and I hope that they will, FINALLY, like my same demand to China, open up the European Nations for Trade with the United States of America.”

Trump also said Tuesday that the EU had been “slow walking” in negotiations with the White House over a trade deal.

The sudden prospect of even greater tariffs on one of the U.S.’ biggest trade partners rattled markets when it was threatened by Trump last Friday. In a post last week, Trump said discussions with the EU were “going nowhere.”

However, sentiment turned positive on Tuesday amid hopes of a breakthrough. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a post on X over the weekend that the EU was “ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively,” while European Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic said Monday that he had “good calls” with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 index slightly extended gains after Trump’s comments on Tuesday, last trading up 0.55% on the previous session, while U.S. markets opened broadly higher.

The 27-member alliance was hit with a 20% tariff on the EU on April 2 as part of Trump’s “reciprocal” tariff strategy, which was then cut for almost all trading partners to 10% for 90 days. Concurrent U.S. duties on autos, steel and aluminum are also hitting the bloc’s exporters.

EU officials have repeatedly stressed that they want to reach a deal with the White House, but that this will not come at any cost. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, earlier this month launched a consultation on tariff countermeasures targeting U.S. imports worth 95 billion euros ($107.4 billion) if a deal is not reached.

CNBC has contacted the European Commission for comment.

On May 8, the U.S. unveiled the outline of a trade deal with the U.K., the first such agreement under the latest Trump administration, although businesses say they are awaiting further details. The deal maintains a 10% baseline tariff on U.K. imports to the U.S., suggesting other countries will face a similar rate at a minimum.

Trump has generally struck a favorable tone toward the U.K. due to its more balanced trade relationship in goods with the U.S. He has accused the EU, however — with which it has a deficit in goods — of treating the U.S. unfairly. EU-U.S. trade is roughly balanced when accounting for both goods and services, according to EU figures.

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