Time for the Thursday Economic Update

And, wouldn't you know it, initial unemployment claims rose to their highest level in 2022, up to 262,000, and the US Producer Price Index (PPI) fell to the lowest level since October, down to 9.8% year over year and down ½% for the month.

If the Fed were not hell bent on making the world safe for useless rich people, they might consider a pause in their rate hikes.

Me, I still think that they are going to raise rates by 75 basis points (¾%) at their next meeting.

U.S. workers’ filings for unemployment benefits edged up last week, reaching their highest level so far this year.

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, increased to a seasonally adjusted 262,000 last week from a revised 248,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday. The weekly number has been on an upward trend since reaching a 50-year low in March.

Last week’s total was slightly above the prior 2022 peak set in July of 261,000 and was above the 2019 weekly average of 218,000.

And

U.S. suppliers raised prices in July at the slowest annual pace since last fall as energy costs dropped, adding to signs price pressures in the economy have eased slightly.

The producer-price index, which generally reflects supply conditions in the economy, increased by 9.8% annually in July, the smallest annual rise since October 2021’s 8.9% increase, the Labor Department said Thursday. Producer prices climbed 11.3% in June from a year earlier.

Producer prices decreased a seasonally adjusted 0.5% in July from the prior month, down sharply from June and the first decline since April 2020, when the pandemic drove the U.S. economy into a short, deep recession.

The PPI report comes a day after the Labor Department said consumer prices rose 8.5% in July from the same month a year ago, down from a four-decade high of 9.1% in June. Taken together, the latest price data suggest that inflation pressures could be easing.

262K initial claims is not a horrible number, it was pretty typical in the before times, and the decrease in both consumer and producer inflation is good news.

The Fed, of course, is a servant of capital, so it will continue to try to beat down labor.