The Labor Department has come out with its weekly jobless claims, and we are still seeing nothing much more than a jobless recovery. The number came in down 12,000 on a revised basis down at 545,000. We had a Bloomberg consensus figure of 575,000 and the prior figure last week was 550,000 on an unrevised basis and went up to 557,000.
Thr four week average fell by 8,750 to 563,000. The more important figure is the army of perpetually unemployed in the continuing jobless claims. This figure rose by 129,000 to 6.23 million. That just proves that last week’s big drop was nothing more than due to the Labor Day weekend when even the broke and jobless take time off.
This is doing nothing to help unemployment’s rise. The economy is stabilizing or recovering, but about 1 in 10 workers now have nothing to do, and close to another 1 in 10 are in the ‘unofficial category’ where they are on small contract, part-time, or earning far less than what they have been making.
For the unemployment rate to stabilize or improve handily, this weekly jobless figure needs to get down closer to 400,000 or even less. So far that has not even come close.
JON C. OGG
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