MISS: Initial Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Jump, But...

The figures unexpectedly jumped to 360,000, a two-month high.

Economists were looking for a reading of 340,000, down from 344,000 a week ago.

However, economist Jim O'Sullivan warns us that we shouldn't put too much weight into this number today.

Here's O'Sullivan:

...Of course, individual weekly readings can be volatile and misleading. This is likely to be one of those weeks, due to the challenge of seasonally adjusting for annual plant shutdowns in the auto industry. The bias has generally been downward in the first week of the annual shutdowns in recent years, with the seasonal factors over-adjusting for shutdown-related filings. However, the seasonal factors look much less aggressive this year, raising the possibility that seasonally adjusted claims will be artificially high. Either way, this week’s data should probably be discounted.