Jobs

Growth Again… In Jobless Claims

The Labor Department released the weekly jobless claims data this morning, and whatever policies are being presented just are not helping on the hiring and firing front in the nation.  The weekly jobless claims rose by 8,000 to 480,000 and…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published February 4, 2010, 8:56am ET · 1 min read

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The Labor Department released the weekly jobless claims data this morning, and whatever policies are being presented just are not helping on the hiring and firing front in the nation.  The weekly jobless claims rose by 8,000 to 480,000 and the week ago data was revised slightly worse to 472,000 from 470,000.  Dow Jones was looking for a 460,000 figure and Bloomberg had estimates yesterday at 455,000.  As we have seen before, there are just fewer and fewer ways to look at this with any positive light or as though there is any meaningful jobs recovery coming.

The four-week average is also rising again, which is a departure from what Main Street was expecting.  That figure rose by 11,750 to 468,750.

The army of unemployed also rose.   This week’s figure rose by 2,000 to 4,602,000, with the prior week’s data being revised to 4,600,000.  Of course, this continuing claims figure is probably far far higher if you count those who aren’t showing up any longer to get the government check when you consider how many have ‘opted out’ of the workforce.

This will only act to set a worse tone for tomorrow’s unemployment figures for January.  We’ll be paying close attention to that figure of those who ‘opted out of the workforce’ because by the last count it was as though they were out for smokes or were being held hostage.

JON C.OGG

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Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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