Thursday, February 10, 2011

Jobless Claims Fall to 2.5 Year Low

Weekly initial jobless claims fell last week to 383,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to today's Department of Labor report, which was the lowest level since July 5, 2008, more than 2-1/2 years ago.  The four-week moving average fell by 16,000 to 415,500 (see chart).

Here's a report from Reuters:

"New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits dropped more than expected last week to touch their lowest point in 2-1/2 years, a government report showed on Thursday, offering assurance that the labor market was strengthening despite January's poor jobs numbers."

Posted 9:07 AM Post Link 5 Comments

5 Comments:

At 2/10/2011 9:11 AM, Blogger McKibbinUSA said...

"Jobless claims fall to 2.5 year low," and yet, the US employment to population ratio stands at a 10-year low -- see chart:

http://wjmc.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-employment-to-population-ratio.html

I continue to sense that the employment situation in the US is worse than we know...

 
At 2/10/2011 9:15 AM, Blogger McKibbinUSA said...

PS: The good news about the weak employment situation in the US is that companies have taken this opportunity to shed some of their employee fat -- in other words, companies today are more lean and mean than ever -- the emerging lean employment character of firms is an example that government needs to learn from...

 
At 2/10/2011 9:42 AM, Blogger morganovich said...

like all the data from last week, i suspect that this was heavily affected by the weather. we saw this same effect with the previous big storm - a drop in claims during the storm week followed by a spike the following week as people "caught up".

 
At 2/10/2011 5:13 PM, Blogger juandos said...


Why The Fed's Policies Are Actually Hurting The Unemployment Rate

We received an interesting letter from a reader today:

So far I have read nothing about QE2 causing high unemployment. Why do I say this…

1) Fed is printing free money for the markets (stock market included).

2) Every company wants their share of the free money.

3) Each company’s share is determined by how much the stock rises which is stimulated by rising earnings.

4) Organic sales growth is anemic, so in order to grow profits you have to lay off or maintain as lean as possible employment.

If a company started to hired and drive down their margins they would be crucified by their shareholders. In effect the Fed is spending hundreds of billions to prevent employment growth.

 
At 2/11/2011 10:02 AM, Blogger VangelV said...

I continue to sense that the employment situation in the US is worse than we know...

I agree. If the BLS counted the unemployed in the same way as when Carter was in office we would be looking at a number that is north of 20% .

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts

 

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