I think most seasoned mortgage investors will choose to discount rather sharply today's large 34,000 drop in the number of Americans standing in line to collect first-time unemployment benefits during the week ended December 25th.



Though it is true the labor sector appears to be making slow improvement, the weekly initial claims number this time of year typically overstates the employment story because of the difficulty of attributing for seasonality. Expect volatility in this data series to be high until the holiday employment factors completely "shake-out" by the first week or two of February.