Jobless Claims Increased More Than Expected

Pre-market futures are widely mixed at this hour, following a one-day purge yesterday from all-time highs the day before. Without making too much of this near-term jostling, we can acknowledge that, without fresh narratives with which to update investors this morning, this looks a bit like profit-taking, at least on the tech-heavy Nasdaq.

Broadcom (AVGO) reported fiscal Q2 earnings yesterday after the closing bell, and despite topping Zacks consensus estimates on both earnings ($2.44 per share versus $2.40 estimated) and revenues (+0.68% to $22.19 billion), shares are down -15% ahead of today’s open. Revenues grew +48% year over year on AI chip demand, but muted guidance left investors wanting, at least compared to other AI tech plays. Also, shares of AVGO had risen +39% year to date, so selling the news appears to be at least part of the narrative here, as well.

Cybersecurity major CrowdStrike (CRWD) also reported earnings yesterday afternoon, demonstrating strong growth in demand but showing signs of tapering off slightly when comparing guidance to the quarterly numbers. All this is by way of explaining why the Nasdaq has sold off -300 points this morning, while the Dow looks to benefit from this equity rotation. The blue-chip index is up +500 points at this hour, following a -600-point selloff yesterday.

Jobless Claims Reach +225K 1st Time in 4 Months

Meanwhile, Thursday morning Weekly Jobless Claims are showing the highest bump in Initial Jobless Claims since the first week of February: +225K. This is still historically consistent with a good labor market, but notably above the sub-200K levels we’d seen only six weeks ago or so. This morning’s tally is roughly +10K higher than expectations, and an increase from the downwardly revised +212K new claims from the previous week.

Continuing Claims, published a week in arrears from initial claims, remained at its sub-1.8 million trough where it has been since mid-April at 1.78 million. This is down from the narrowly adjusted 1.785 million the previous week. Again, nothing to worry about from an historical perspective; unless/until this metric creeps back up toward 2 million — which we last saw in November of 2021, post-Covid — we can assume no meaningful headwinds to near-term labor numbers.

Q1 Productivity Drops to +0.3% on Final Print

The final look at Q1 Productivity ratcheted down by half a percentage point this morning to +0.3%, the lowest output for U.S. Productivity since -0.9% was reported in Q1 of last year. Sequentially, we’re currently seeing a slowdown from +1.6% in Q4 of 2025 and +5.2% in Q3 of last year (which was a 5-year high), and hope for a rebound in Q2.

Unit Labor Costs is the other side of this report, and here the downward revision is more welcome news for those concerned with inflation making its presence felt: +1.8% is down half a point from the +2.3% previously posted and the final +2.1% from Q4’25. We expect developments in data center buildouts for AI, the Chips Act construction continuing and other areas of productivity to right this ship to a certain extent in the coming quarters; time will tell.

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

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