The weekly jobless claims are are fresh out from the Labor Department.  All the gains we started to see and the progress made late in 2009 are going the wrong way now.  We show a gain of 36,000 to 482,000.  One problem also is that the estimates were to be around 440,000.  This was also the first gain in the four week average so far this year with a gain of 7,000 to 448,250.  The army of the unemployed fell by 18,000 on an adjusted basis to 4,599,000 from last week’s revised level of 4,617,000.

The continuing claims are lower by enough that all we can point to is how many in the last official unemployment report have just entirely ‘opted out of the labor force’…. opted out, whatever that means.  There is no way to spin this new weekly data in a positive manner.  This is headed back the wrong way.

JON C.OGG