Jobless claims were released earlier this morning and showed a larger than expected decline, falling from 234K down to 229K.   Less than two months after three hurricanes ravaged different parts of the United States, jobless claims had their third lowest weekly print of the current expansion.  The even more amazing aspect of the recent trends in jobless claims is that the lowest print of the cycle came two weeks ago!  As things stand now, jobless claims have now been below 300K for 139 straight weeks.

With such low prints in recent weeks, the four-week moving average for jobless claims fell to 232.5K, marking a new low for the current cycle.  Not since 1973 has the four-week moving average been lower!

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, jobless claims were pretty much unchanged at 215.8K from last week’s level of 215.7K.  For the current week of the year, jobless claims are well more than 100K lower than their average for the current week of the year dating back to 2000 and haven’t been this low at this time of year since 1973.

Today’s release of the latest ISM Manufacturing report for the month of October came in weaker than expected as things cooled off slightly from a strong September.  Looking at the commentary section of this month’s report, though, shows two distinct themes.  First, the hurricanes really had a major impact on business operations around the country (yellow highlights).  Second, business activity remains strong.  Most of the selected comments all indicated that business is strong and accelerating.

While the commentary was strong, the headline index showed a slight decline, falling from last month’s 13-year high of 60.8 down to 58.7.  While that represents a relatively large two-point decline, outside of the two prior monthly readings, it would have been the highest monthly print since April 2011!

Like the headline index, breadth in this month’s report was on the weak side in the short-term but still trending higher over the longer term.  As shown in the table below, even as all but one of the report’s sub-components declined on a m/m basis, all but one was also up on a y/y over basis.  The last time we saw weaker breadth on a m/m basis was in August 2016.  Finally, looking ahead to this Friday’s jobs report, although the employment component of this month’s report was down m/m, it saw one of the smallest declines of any component and still remains high relative to history.

We like to track sales of pickup trucks (specifically at Ford) as they are often a sign of strength or weakness in the small business and construction sectors, and based on these numbers from Ford, the small business sector looks strong.  For the month of October, Ford sold 75,974 F-Series trucks.  That represents a y/y increase of 16% and is the strongest October sales figure for the company since 2004.  Going back to 1996, the only three Octobers that were better than 2017 were 2001 (102K), 2004 (80K), and 1998 (78K).  When comparing sales on a m/m basis, it isn’t always an apples to apples comparison because of differences in ‘selling’ days, but a 16% y/y increase is positive no matter how you look at it.

While differences in the number of selling days can skew results over the short-term when comparing figures on a YTD basis, unadjusted numbers provide more of an apples to apples comparison, and here again, Ford’s results for 2017 continue to be very strong.  Through the end of October, total sales of F-Series trucks have been 734,610.  That represents an increase of 11.1% and is the best YTD reading for the first ten months of the year since 2005.