Peak unemployment below 4.5% stays the consensus call
Kalshi ladder
record: CMSIG2026082003 | category: momentum-repricing | target: CM-EVT-RBY62SKLC0 | published: 2026-08-20
4-bullet brief | narrative
- Ladder pricing puts peak unemployment below 4.5% as the base case: only 21% of probability sits at 4.5% or above.
- Claims at 206,000 are consistent with this subdued tail, the market is not pricing a significant unemployment spike.
- The distribution has a long, flat tail from 5.0% to 20.0%, each capturing only 1-5%, reflecting low-probability recession scenarios.
- A companion ladder (CM-EVT-720DZC17Y9) implies the September U-3 rate near 4.2-4.3%, consistent with modest upward drift from the July 4.1% print.
atomic briefs | structured for retrieval
[01] news_event
significance
surfaced in the daily Exa news-cycle scan; mechanically matched to an active kalshi market
- story
- Initial jobless claims fell to 206,000, with layoffs remaining comparatively sparse across the labor market.exa_search → apnews.com · as_of 2026-08-23T08:24:02+00:00 [mediated]
- publisher
- apnews.com
- published_at
- 2026-08-20T00:00:00.000Z
[02] pm_response
- interp
- Ladder resolved via FRED unemployment data; the 21% at 4.5% is the first meaningful probability mass above the current rate.llm_judge_cm_signal_v1 [editorial]
evaluation
News-cycle wires publish on coverage, not editorial selection — the day’s top stories matched to the prediction markets pricing them, so nothing is cherry-picked.
- judge_engine
none — deterministic news-cycle scan- judge_verdict
- auto_published
- judge_confidence
- n/a — no judge gate (deterministic publishing)
- prompt_template
news_cycle_v1github · auditable- match_method
entity_slug_match (mechanical)
citation graph
Every wire traces back to the ClearMarket event it is built on, and out to each venue’s own market page — so any figure here can be verified at its source.
internal
- cm_event
- /events/kxu3max-27/
external
programmatic access · four surfaces, same payload
AI grounded search reads embedded JSON-LD in HTML. Developers query REST. Agentic AI clients (Claude Desktop, Cursor) call MCP tools. AI crawlers index via /llms.txt. Same canonical record at every surface.
| HTML | browsers, AI grounded search, crawlers (contains embedded JSON-LD @type: Dataset) | https://clearmarket.fyi/signals/peak-us-unemployment-before-2027-ladder-below-4-5-2026-08-20/ |
| JSON | REST API for developers | https://clearmarket.fyi/signals/peak-us-unemployment-before-2027-ladder-below-4-5-2026-08-20.json |
| MCP | agentic AI tool call (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Continue) | clearmarket.get_signal("peak-us-unemployment-before-2027-ladder-below-4-5-2026-08-20") |
| AGENT | AI crawler discovery index | /llms.txt |
PM data: platform APIs (hourly refresh). News context: retrieved with source citations. Editorial judgment: LLM judge with prompt template versioned per wire type. Per-claim provenance inline above; full per-field provenance map at the JSON endpoint under field_provenance.
raw JSON record · same payload returned by REST endpoint {
"$schema": "https://clearmarket.fyi/schema/signal/v1.json",
"provenance_version": "0.2.0",
"record_id": "CMSIG2026082003",
"published_at": "2026-08-20T00:00:00.000Z",
"detection": "news_cycle",
"category_tag": "MOMENTUM_REPRICING",
"secondary_tags": [],
"pre_news_classification": "concurrent",
"target_event_id": "CM-EVT-RBY62SKLC0",
"target_event_slug": "kxu3max-27",
"event_question": "Peak US unemployment rate before 2027",
"bullets": [
"Ladder pricing puts peak unemployment below 4.5% as the base case: only 21% of probability sits at 4.5% or above.",
"Claims at 206,000 are consistent with this subdued tail, the market is not pricing a significant unemployment spike.",
"The distribution has a long, flat tail from 5.0% to 20.0%, each capturing only 1-5%, reflecting low-probability recession scenarios.",
"A companion ladder (CM-EVT-720DZC17Y9) implies the September U-3 rate near 4.2-4.3%, consistent with modest upward drift from the July 4.1% print."
],
"atomic_claims": [
{
"type": "news_event",
"field_provenance": {
"story": {
"tier": "mediated",
"method": "exa_search",
"source": "apnews.com",
"source_url": "https://apnews.com/article/unemployment-claims-jobs-economy-layoffs-5d623586cbcf1eeeaa6ee6cc084ed566",
"retrieved_at": "2026-08-23T08:24:02+00:00"
}
},
"significance": {
"threshold": 5,
"threshold_unit": "rank",
"passed": true,
"reason": "surfaced in the daily Exa news-cycle scan; mechanically matched to an active kalshi market"
},
"story": "Initial jobless claims fell to 206,000, with layoffs remaining comparatively sparse across the labor market.",
"publisher": "apnews.com",
"published_at": "2026-08-20T00:00:00.000Z",
"source_url": "https://apnews.com/article/unemployment-claims-jobs-economy-layoffs-5d623586cbcf1eeeaa6ee6cc084ed566"
},
{
"type": "pm_response",
"field_provenance": {
"notes": {
"tier": "editorial",
"method": "llm_judge_cm_signal_v1"
}
},
"notes": "Ladder resolved via FRED unemployment data; the 21% at 4.5% is the first meaningful probability mass above the current rate."
}
],
"evaluation": {
"judge_engine": "none — deterministic news-cycle scan",
"judge_verdict": "auto_published",
"judge_confidence": null,
"prompt_template": "news_cycle_v1"
},
"citations": {
"internal": {
"cm_event": "/events/kxu3max-27/",
"related": []
},
"external": {
"venue_a": "https://kalshi.com/markets/KXU3MAX-27-4.5",
"venue_b": null,
"benchmark": null
}
},
"sources": [
{
"label": "apnews.com: US unemployment claims fall with layoffs still comparatively sparse |",
"url": "https://apnews.com/article/unemployment-claims-jobs-economy-layoffs-5d623586cbcf1eeeaa6ee6cc084ed566",
"published_at": "2026-08-20T00:00:00.000Z",
"retrieved_at": "2026-08-23T08:24:02+00:00"
}
],
"field_provenance": {
"pm_data": "kalshi_api",
"news_context": "exa_search",
"editorial_judgment": "cm_signal_llm_judge"
}
}
PROVENANCE PROTOCOL v0.2 · [direct] venue api · [mediated] grounded web fetch + source url · [derived] computed from listed inputs · [editorial] versioned llm judgment · full spec /schema/provenance/v1