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Jobs

Imagine That, Jobless Claims Softer Than Estimates

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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This morning we have seen the weekly jobless claims.  While economists are always noting that unemployment is a lagging indicator, go ask anyone in the unemployment lines how lagging this feels.  The numbers were 639,000.  This is horrible on the surface, but it is actually less than what is expected.

Estimates were for 650,000 from an unrevised 667,000 the week before. The week before showed a revised number of 670,000.  The continuing jobless claims were actually down 14,000 to right at 5.106 million.

As a reminder, the FEB-2009 unemployment numbers are out tomorrow morning.  Bloomberg estimates have 7.9% as consensus (up from 7.6% in January) and the change in non-Farm Payrolls is expected to be -648,000 (up from -598,000).

Jon C. Ogg
March 5, 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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