US initial jobless claims fell by 24,000 during the week ending January 3 to 467,000, but as we mentioned last week, employment reports for the last two weeks of 2008 should be ignored as the closure of government offices on the holidays, such as New Year's Day, skew the numbers. However, this makes the results of the count of continuing jobless claims even worse, as they rose by 101,000 to a fresh 26-year high of 4.611 million during the week ending December 27 despite the theory that fewer people would be able to file claims. This does not bode well for tomorrow's US non-farm payrolls figure and the unemployment rate, as the labor market is forecasted to have lost at least a half million jobs, and also suggests that the US dollar could pull back further.
US Continuing Jobless Claims (Weekly)

Source: Bloomberg