• There were 260K initial claims in the week ending on January 25, in line with expected. 
• The dollar rallied, though that was more to do with strong GDP figures. 

There were 260,000 initial claims for unemployment benefits in the US during the week ending January 22, data published by the US Department of Labor (DoL) revealed on Thursday. This reading followed last week's print of 290,000 (revised up from 260,000) and was in line with consensus market expectations for 260,000. Continued Claims rose slightly more than expected to 1.675M in the week ending on January 15 from 1.624M the week prior (revised lower from 1.635M) and was slightly above the 1.65M expected. The insured unemployment rate remained unchanged at 1.2%. 

Market Reaction

In wake of the latest US data dump that saw GDP growth for Q4 come in much stronger than anticipated, the US dollar has been kicking higher, with the DXY recently crossing into fresh daily/multi-month highs in the 97.20s.