00:00You were looking for a number around 200,000. How does 199 sound to you? 199,000 initial jobless claims.
00:07That's not the all-time low. We saw that the low back to 1969 three weeks ago, 188, but it
00:14is pretty darn low. Last week revised up to 198, so we're basically about unchanged on this whole thing.
00:23In terms of the continuing claims number, 1,801,000, that's an increase from 1777 the two weeks before. Remember,
00:34that one is delayed.
00:35We also got some numbers on productivity. Non-farm productivity rose 1.4 percent after rising eight-tenths of a
00:42percent in the first quarter.
00:43That's a revised number, so productivity revised higher in the first quarter and significantly higher than anticipated in the second
00:50quarter.
00:50The anticipation was for a six-tenths percent rise. The initial unit labor costs come in at 1.3 percent,
01:00significantly lower than the 2.1 percent that was anticipated,
01:04although it was revised down to 1.3 percent for the first quarter. So at this point, it looks like
01:09there is a productivity story underway,
01:12whether it has much to do with AI or not is something that economists are already arguing about.
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