US initial jobless claims fall for first time in 2022

Initial jobless claims fell for the first time in four weeks in the seven days ended 22 January, slipping 260,000 from the prior week's upwardly revised print of 290,000, according to the Labor Department.

The decline, which comes after jobless claims hit a three-month high a week earlier, seemingly implies that some of the Covid-19 Omicron variant-related disruptions that had been weighing on the labour market's recovery may be fading.

Continuing claims for the week ended 15 January came to 1.67m, versus estimates for a print of 1.65m and the previous week's downwardly revised reading of 1.62m, while the four-week moving average of jobless claims came to 247,000, an increase of 15,000 week-on-week.