After plunging near 60 year lows in the prior week (at 192k), initial jobless claims rebounded (as many expected) to 236k last week - back into the 'normal' range and nothing at all to worry about from a labor market perspective...

Source: Bloomberg

Sure enough it was California in large part that was responsible for the chaos...

Source: Bloomberg

But while initial claims rebounded back to 'normal', continuing jobless claims plummeted

Source: Bloomberg

We assume whatever screw-up that seasonal adjustments caused in initial claims the week before have rippled through to the continuing claims data this week, but still - taken at face value, it's great news!

However, there could be an even more silver lining as we noted last week, before Trump sent out his ICE troops, California's Continuing Claims were running ~400K per week. Beginning in the summer, however, these claims steadily dropped... and perhaps this week's crash in continuing claims is the chopping block coming down on illegals claiming benefits in California?