Unemployment claims stayed below the threshold considered a good sign for the job market for a second week, with the Department of Labor reporting 367,000 initial claims for unemployment last week, a drop of 1,000 from the previous week's revised figure. (Note that these numbers are basically always revised upward.) Claims had been forecast to rise slightly.

The four-week moving average, favored because it flattens volatility, dropped 5,250 to 379,000.

For the week ending April 21, the total number of people claiming benefits in all programs, including federal emergency extensions, was 6,423,383, a decrease of 174,529 from the previous week. As Meteor Blades reminds us each week, though, "That number will fall sharply between now and September as the government reduces the weeks of benefits in the states hardest hit by joblessness from 99 to 63," so we shouldn't assume it's good news when it falls.

We have one side of good news—that the number of people to have become unemployed in the past week is at a level that signals job growth—the other side of good news will come when people who have been unemployed, in many cases for far too long, find work. One piece of good news on this front is that the ratio of job-seekers to job openings improved in March, as did the level of voluntary quits. Slow improvement is better than none, both for working people and for President Obama's reelection prospects. But of course, slow improvement isn't what we'd really want for either.