Dow Jones Struggles as U.S. Unemployment Continues to Climb

The Dow Jones slipped again on Thursday. A quiet day of trade showed bulls struggling to lift the index higher. Another weak initial jobless claims release was little help to the Dow, as economists continue to stress that the unemployment situation is deeply concerning. All three major U.S. stock market indices traded lower on Thursday. The best performing was the Nasdaq, with a 0.05% loss, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones both slumped around 0.2%.

U.S. jobless claims were worse than expected last week. Yet again, the Dow Jones proved resilient in the face of dismal unemployment numbers. At some point, Wall Street may be forced to confront the employment fundamentals. For now, investors appear confident that large swathes of these job losses will be coming back. Whether they do is yet to be seen.

A large portion of the lost jobs are in the service sector, and even before cases started picking up, there was evidence that restaurant bookings were sliding again. Philadelphia Fed manufacturing comfortably beat forecasts, suggesting that some kind of rebound remains underway in the sector. There was also some potentially good political news for stocks. The Trump administration appears to be doing its best to de-escalate tension with China.

While there were no big losers, it was a generally poor day for the Dow 30 as most of its members fell. Apple’s incredible momentum finally slowed, as the tech giant hung around flat on the day. Boeing lost 0.5% on a rare day of low volatility for the aerospace giant. Goldman Sachs fell 1% as yields remain near record lows.

Dow Jones Struggles as U.S. Unemployment Continues to Climb, CCN, Jun 19