The number of Americans claiming initial jobless benefits fell unexpectedly
2000 last week to the lowest level in 4 years as the US labor market
continued to strengthen a government report showed Thursday.
First time claims for state unemployment insurance aid dropped for the
third consecutive time, to 302,000, in the week ended Feb. 12th from 304,000 in
the previous week, the Labor dept said.
Last week's decline marks the lowest level since Oct. 2000, before the
economy tipped into recession
The closely watched 4- week moving average which smooths weekly volatility
in claims,also fell to 311,750, down 4000 from the previous week
Destined to be the most underreported item of the day
3 comments:
Funny, I talked to my daughter today and her husband is with electrical union. Been laid off since last fall, unemployment gone. Their paper said since Bush didn't take responsiblity for the downturn, they won't give him credit for the upturn! Amazing!
Can't you just hear NPR now..."Economy still sluggish as jobless claims show a meager 2000 drop in claims"
Yes! A one percent drop in the rate of job loss! It's most certainly cause for dancing in the streets, you know. Stop-the-presses time, certainly.
Are you all aware that the unemployment claims stop working after six months? So, a little math example here. Follow along, kids!
In the economy of Pretendia, there are 50m people in the job market. 48m of whom are working at a given time, 2m of whom are less than six months out of work and looking for another job.
Okay, so that's 4% unemployment. Now, say there's tremendous layoffs because the Roncosquid can now be manufactured with a tenth the labor, and special Roncosquid fitters are obsolete. 2m people lose their jobs. So, that's 46m working, 4m looking. 8% unemployment! Horrors!
Ah, but six months from then, none of the Roncosquid fitters have found work. They stop collecting unemployment, and start collecting mold. So, the economy consists of 46m working, 2m looking. That's 4.2% unemployment---almost the same. Except that nothing's really changed since we had 8% unemployment.
Do you get why this is not a good measure of how good the job market is? Look, until the size of the job market---the total number of employed people---reaches what it was pre-9/11, I won't believe that we've recovered.
Why is it that the total job cont does worse under a Republican administration than a Democratic one? I mean, since frickin Hoover this has been the case. What's up with that?
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