Homebuilding Down, Jobless Claims Up; Fed News Later
Wednesday, June 18, 2025Pre-market futures are holding onto early morning gains, but are lower than they were before this morning's economic data began hitting the tape. Dow futures are now +10 points, the S&P 500 is +5 and the Nasdaq +30 points. These are down from 40, 10 and 50 points, respectively.As we prepare to honor our Juneteenth holiday Thursday with closed banks and stock markets, we see Weekly Jobless Claims pulled a day earlier to this morning. Initial Jobless Claims came in-line with expectations at 245K, 5000 lower than the upwardly revised 250K the prior week, which is the highest level since a one-week blip of 259K back in October of last year.The trailing four-week average in new claims is now 245K — again, directly in-line with today's result and its expectation. The previous four weeks averaged just over 231K, so we can see these numbers creeping up. This has been anticipated by analysts ever since big layoffs at corporations and the federal government began during the first quarter of 2025.Continuing Claims, reported a week in arrears from initial claims, came in at 1.945 million for two weeks ago. This makes the fourth-straight week longer-term jobless claims have notched above 1.9 million. (There is nothing inherently meaningful in 1.9 million continuing claims other than its proximity to 2 million, by the way.)
U.S. Housing Starts for May posted its lowest tally since May 2020 — the heart of the Covid pandemic: 1.256 million seasonally adjusted, annualized units fell nearly -10% month over month from the upwardly revised 1.392 million for April, and far lower than the 1.35 million analysts had anticipated. Building Permits were also below expectations, reaching 1.393 million seasonally adjusted, annualized units in May from 1.42 million estimated (which was the upward revision to the prior month). This again is the lowest print in five years, and demonstrates a cooling housing market continuing to find its way through the current high-mortgage-rate economy.Single-family homes were flat month over month, -7% year over year. Multi-family took a -30% hit month over month, off a record number of new builds over the past few years. Permits for multi-family were +13% year over year. The housing market sees strong demand for rentals continuing, which should keep multi-family projects in the lead over single-family. We expect this to continue until mortgage rates start to come down meaningfully.
The 'big news' today will be the announcement from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and the press conference with Fed Chair Jerome Powell following. There won't be any rate cut today, but we do expect a new 'dot plot' from the Fed, which will tip their hand regarding how many rate cuts the FOMC currently expects to deliver this year, and when they might start.This will be the fourth of eight total FOMC meetings this year: the next will be July, but as per tradition, the Fed will skip August. Odds for a September cut are notably higher, although this might be a matter of economists pushing out their hockey sticks a bit. (You'll recall earlier this year that this June meeting was the latest analysts had expected a first rate cut to occur. But a resilient economy combined with a murky tariff outlook have kept those rate cuts at bay.)Questions or comments about this article and/or author? Click here>>
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