In the week ended May 30, initial claims came out very close to expectations drop-ping by 4 000 from an upwardly revised 625 000 to 621 000. Continuing claims, which are reported with a one week lag, dropped by 15 000 from a downwardly ad-justed 6 750 000 to 6 735 000, while the consensus was looking for a much higher outcome (6 855 000). It might be important to note that the week ended May 30 in-cluded the Memorial Day holiday, which might have distorted the figures. Neverthe-less, this is the first decline in continuing claims since the start of the year, which is an encouraging sign.
EMU: retail sales show first increase in seven months
In April, euro zone retail sales showed the first increase in seven month. On a monthly basis, retail sales rose by 0.2% M/M, perfectly in line with the consensus es-timate. The previous figure was however significantly upwardly revised (from -0.6% M/M to -0.1% M/M). Looking at the details, food, drink, tobacco rose by 1.1% M/M, which might be Easter related, while non-food products dropped by 0.2% M/M. On a yearly basis, retail sales are down by 2.3% Y/Y.
