Economy

Thursday's DOL release covers the week ending July 4, when the BLS seasonal adjustment model applies a moving-holiday regressor specifically designed to strip out the Independence Day effect — making the four-week moving average and continuing claims the more reliable reads than the weekly print alone. Over the past five post-pandemic July 4 weeks, seasonally adjusted initial claims have swung between -17,000 and +12,000 from the prior week, a range the BLS methodology treats as adjustment residual noise rather than labor-market signal. A print above 235,000, a four-week average breaking through 230,000, or continuing claims above 1,900,000 would constitute a meaningful deviation from the current steady-state trend heading into the July 28-29 FOMC meeting, where markets currently price roughly 80 percent odds of no rate change.

China's central bank has kept its one-year Loan Prime Rate at 3.0% and five-year LPR at 3.5% since mid-2025, but has been easing financial conditions through a narrowed short-term rate corridor and a doubling of its Hong Kong RMB liquidity facility to 500 billion yuan. The article explains how the PBOC replaced the Medium-term Lending Facility with the 7-day reverse repo rate as its primary policy anchor, giving it tools to inject liquidity without the market signal of a headline rate cut. Whether this approach continues or gives way to a benchmark cut depends on the Q2 2026 GDP figure due July 15, with a reading below 5.0% year-on-year seen as the threshold most likely to force a policy pivot.