Weekly Jobless Claims Below Expectations

Pre-market futures are up again this morning, helping a strong week of trading get even stronger. Hope springs eternal regarding the war in Iran, with investors currently betting on a benign and near-term outcome. The Dow is +88 points, +0.18%, the S&P 500 is +9 points, +0.13%, the Nasdaq +52, +0.20%, and the small-cap Russell 2000 +1 point, +0.05%. The S&P and Nasdaq closed at new all-time highs yesterday.

Jobless Claims Remain Historically Tame: +207K, 1.82M

Initial Jobless Claims once again came in lower than expected for last week: +207K. This follows a downwardly revised +218K the previous week, and is now back down to jobless claims levels not seen since January of 2024. Pre-Covid, we were hitting 50-year lows, but post-Covid, this is almost as low as we’ve gotten.

Continuing Claims bumped up slightly to a still-diminutive 1.818 million, but this was off a multi-year low (again, January 2024) tally of 1.787 million, revised lower month over month. Weekly Jobless Claims have consistently represented the healthiest figures on the domestic labor market since holiday season 2025.

One caveat to this data set would be that corporate layoffs in 2026 thus far have not been insignificant. Meta Platforms META let go nearly -16K employees just last month, Citigroup C is winding down -20K of its workforce, Mastercard MA -1400, and several other companies reducing payrolls by roughly -1000 just since the start of the year. Perhaps generous severance pay has muted the jobless claims thus far, but overall it feels like a bill that’s about to come due.

Philly Fed Improves in April

Following yesterday’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey, which showed growth in the state of New York for April, this morning Philly Fed tracks the same thing for the sixth-biggest city in the U.S.: +26.7 on headline is the strongest we’ve seen in nearly a year and a half, more than double the +12 expected. This is the fourth month in a row of positive Philly Fed results, higher sequentially in each of the months, after six of the previous eight months with negative Philly Fed numbers.

Q1 Earnings at a Glance

PepsiCo PEP beat estimates on both top and bottom lines this morning, with Q1 earnings coming in at $1.61 per share outpacing the $1.55 in the Zacks consensus. Cutting the prices of snack foods helped revenues gain in the quarter. Shares are up +1% on the news, adding to the +7.9% Pepsi has gained, year to date. 

Elsewhere, Abbott Labs ABT surpassed earnings estimates by a penny to $1.15 per share. The company is still working to digest Exact Sciences, and disappointed investors have sold the stock -4% this morning. Taiwan Semiconductor TSM beat and raised in its Q1, topping on earnings by +5.4% on revenue growth of +35% year over year. The Travelers TRV crushed earnings estimates by +10.5% to $7.71 per share and upped its dividend, but shares are down at this hour.

After today’s close, Netflix NFLX reports Q1 earnings results. Analysts expect year-over-year growth of +22.73% on earnings and +15.4% on revenues. The streaming giant has beaten on earnings in three of the past four quarters, but the stock has underperformed for much of the past year, although we’re well up from lows for the year.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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