Initial Jobless Claims

Initial jobless claims count the people who filed for unemployment benefits for the first time in a given week. Because it is published weekly rather than monthly, it is the highest-frequency read on the US labour market available to traders, and it moves the dollar mainly when it diverges from expectations or breaks an established trend. The weekly number is noisy — holidays, weather and seasonal adjustment all distort a single print — so the four-week moving average is usually the figure economists read. Its main use is as an early signal between monthly payrolls releases, not as a replacement for them.