{"id":306901,"date":"2026-02-19T22:30:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T22:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/306901\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T22:30:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T22:30:06","slug":"jobless-claims-fell-but-other-us-signals-look-mixed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/306901\/","title":{"rendered":"Jobless Claims Fell, But Other US Signals Look Mixed"},"content":{"rendered":"

fell 0.2% in December as expectations, new orders, and manufacturing hours cooled. Trade is another weak spot. The US goods deficit widened to $70.31 billion in December as imports rose and exports fell. Put together, it helps explain why Atlanta Fed GDPNow trimmed its Q4 growth estimate to 3.0% from 3.6% \u2013 still solid, just less punchy than before.<\/p>\n

Why should I care?<\/p>\n

For markets: Good news is getting more selective.<\/p>\n

Low layoffs usually support consumer<\/a>-facing sectors because paychecks keep flowing. But weaker leading signals and a wider trade gap can keep investors debating whether growth is merely cooling or about to downshift faster \u2013 which often reshuffles leadership between cyclical areas and defensive ones.<\/p>\n

Zooming out: Energy can still steer inflation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Inventory moves matter because energy prices feed into inflation, and inflation shapes how long interest<\/a> rates stay restrictive. Natural gas stocks fell to 2.070 trillion cubic feet and sit below the five-year average, while crude inventories dropped sharply in the latest week. If supplies stay tight, energy could keep overall price pressures stickier than other data suggests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"fell 0.2% in December as expectations, new orders, and manufacturing hours cooled. Trade is another weak spot. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-306901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}