Jobless Claims Continue Blistering Pace

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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The weekly jobless claims data has surpassed the dreaded 600,000 mark.  The last week’s unemployment lines were down 8,000 to 623,000.  We had weekly jobless claims numbers expected as 610,000 versus an unrevised 626,0000 last week according to Bloomberg consensus estimates.

The four week average rose by 24,000 to 607,500.  The continuing claims are still going up, and this week’s 11,000 put the continuing jobless claims at 4.81 million.  This appears to be the highest number of continuing claims since the Labor Department started tracking it.

Imagine how high those continuing claims would be if the jobless claims benefit duration was extended…… Again, 8% unemployment looks like it may not even be a speed bump to something much worse.

Jon C. Ogg
February 12, 2009

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About the Author 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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