by Laura Conaway

New jobless claims rose last week by 12,000 to 669,000. Ian Shepherdson, the High Frequency economist so often first out of the box, notes that the consensus predicted 650,000 new people looking for unemployment benefits. Claims for last week were revised upward by 5,000, helping the four- and eight-week moving averages hit new highs. He writes:

The rate of increase is likely slowing, though, as the extreme compression in economic activity after the Lehman bankruptcy eases a bit. But claims are typically one of the very first indicators to signal economic recovery, and there is no sign of that in the data yet.