Macro Briefing: 5 December 2025

US weekly jobless claims fell to the lowest level in over three years last week. The Thanksgiving holiday is probably a factor that’s distorting the data, but recent updates suggest that layoffs remain muted. “The labor market is kind of frozen,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide. “Companies are in wait-and-see mode.”

US job cuts announced by employers rose 24% in November vs. the year-ago level, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. November’s total is the highest for the month since 2022, but the total number of cuts fell from October, which is “certainly a positive sign,” said the firm’s chief revenue officer Andy Challenger. “That said, job cuts in November have risen above 70,000 only twice since 2008: in 2022 and in 2008.”

The Bank of Japan may be set to raise interest rates again, an event that could ripple through global bond markets. “The lessons from these episodes are that JGB sell-offs really matter for global bond markets,” said Mike Riddell, a fund manager at Fidelity International. “The higher JGB yields go, the more incentivised the huge Japanese domestic investors are to sell overseas holdings and bring the money back home. Contagion can then rapidly spread outside of Japan.”

The Chicago Tribune sues AI search engine Perplexity alleging copyright infringement. The Tribune’s lawyers claims that Perplexity is delivering Tribune content verbatim. The Tribune is one of 17 news publications from MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing that sued OpenAI and Microsoft over model training material in April. That suit is ongoing.

Americans’ confidence in the economy slipped in November to the lowest level since July 2024, according to a new Gallup poll. “The decline reflects slightly worsening views on both components of the index: Americans’ ratings of current economic conditions (as excellent, good, only fair or poor) and their perceptions of whether the economy is getting better or getting worse,” Gallup reports.