Quick claims data review

Initial jobless claims were about as expected when including last week's revision. For the week ended 2/3 it totaled 218k, 2k less than forecasted but last week was revised up by 3k to 227k. This raises the 4 week average to 212k vs 209k last week and compares with 203k in the week before. Continuing claims, delayed by a week, fell by 23k to 1.871mm after rising by 66k in the prior week.