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Jobs

The Sub-600K Jobless Numbers Arrive, With a Thud

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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The Labor Department has just released its latest round of weekly jobless claims.  This was a huge reduction to a level that is finally under 600,000.  The number came in at a revised -52,000, down to a reading of 565,000. Bloomberg had a consensus estimate last seen of some 610,000 after a preliminary report last week of 614,000 on an unrevised basis.  Before thinking this is absolutely the end of 600,000 and higher in the reports, keep in mind that last week was a holiday week and is one of the most traveled weeks of the year.

On the continuing jobless claims by those in the benefits line more than one week, that actually came in much higher with a gain of 159,000 to 6,883,000.  The number last week was down 53,000 to 6,751,500.

The four-week average came down by 10,000 to 606,000.

This does give more ammunition for those looking for green shoots, but the notion that this is good is still misguided.  We have been told by more than one economist that these weekly claims and that continuing claims number have to come down much lower before it translates to an improvement in the unemployment rate.

Equity futures were already higher before this number came out and we have not seen any spikes higher.  Traders are apparently not believing that this is anything other than a holiday-induced anomaly.

Jon C. Ogg
July 9, 2009

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

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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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