This week's Initial Claims figure came in at 267K, an increase of 12K from the 255K of the prior week. The sub-300K Initial Claims figure isn't surprising lately. In fact, Initial Claims have been below 300K for 21 consecutive weeks. Business Cycle - Looking at Times When Initial Claims Stayed Below 300K The incredible amount of time Initial Claims have been below 300K brings the question - How does this performance compare to past experiences of Initial Claims strength? Here's a look. The table captures instances when Initial Claims stayed below 300K. The rows represent the week when the sub-300K cycle started. The columns capture the number of weeks Claims claims spent below 300K. Unsurprisingly, there are lots of instances when Initial Claims spent only 1 week below 300K before jumping right back above 300K. This occurred in 1993, 1998, some of the 1999 weeks, and so forth. Of course, although one-and-done weeks are the most common, there's lots of cycles that lasted five or six weeks below the 300K mark. These weeks include June 1999, October 1999, and a very long period of 21 weeks that began in February 2000, lasting until July 2000. The NASDAQ (and overall technology sector) started collapsing a few months before and continued through this period of Initial Claims strength. The obvious question when looking thinking about the Initial Claims picture is whether the business cycle is... More