It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We have a few bits of news, first unemployment numbers where, initial claims jumped by 22,000 to 231,000, and continuing claims rose from 1.82 million to 1.84 million, which is obviously bad news.

Applications for US unemployment benefits rose by more than forecast last week, when severe winter weather gripped much of the country.

Initial claims increased by 22,000 to 231,000 in the final week of January, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. Claims exceeded all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, increased to 1.84 million in the previous week.

Business disruptions tied to severe winter weather may have prompted more Americans to seek unemployment assistance. Initial claims figures have generally showed that companies are largely reluctant to reduce headcount amid solid economic growth.

………

Those reductions contributed to more than a doubling in the number of US announced job cuts in January from a year earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Hiring intentions also softened, the outplacement firm’s data showed earlier on Thursday.

Also we have the largest number of job cuts in a January since 2009, at the the height of the great recession. 

US companies announced the largest number of job cuts for any January since the depths of the Great Recession in 2009, according to data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

Companies last month announced 108,435 job cuts, a 118% increase from a year earlier. The report on Thursday also showed hiring intentions slid 13% from a year earlier to 5,306 — marking the weakest total for any January in the firm’s records back to 2009.

“Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January,” said Andy Challenger, the company’s chief revenue officer. “It means most of these plans were set at the end of 2025, signaling employers are less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026.”

Finally, US job openings hit a 5 year low in December.

US job openings dropped to the lowest level in more than five years in December and data for the prior month was revised lower amid a softening in labor market conditions at the end of 2025.

Job openings, a measure of labor demand, decreased by 386,000 to 6.542m by the last day of December, the lowest level since September 2020, the labor department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or Jolts report, on Thursday.

Data for November was revised down to show 6.928m job openings instead of the previously reported 7.146m. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 7.20m unfilled jobs. Hiring increased by 172,000 positions to a still-low 5.293m in December.

If I hadn't called recession a few months back, I'd be calling it now.