Jobs

Jobless Claims Nearing Half-Million, Again

This morning’s weekly jobless claims from the Labor Department are showing a whole new round of concerns that perhaps the recently weak consumer confidence is due to the notion that jobs are not getting better.  The weekly jobless claims rose…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published February 25, 2010, 8:40am ET · 1 min read

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This morning’s weekly jobless claims from the Labor Department are showing a whole new round of concerns that perhaps the recently weak consumer confidence is due to the notion that jobs are not getting better.  The weekly jobless claims rose by 22,000 to 496,000.  Bloomberg had consensus pegged at 460,000.

If weekly jobless claims get back over 500,000 it will mark a psychological blow to the labor market situation.  It will also confirm everyone’s notion that the recent drop in unemployment is due to math calculations and due to opt-outs or end of benefit periods rather than any real recovery.

The army of the unemployed via continuing jobless claims also rose by 6,000 to some 4.62 million.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

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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