Jobless Claims Hit New Highs: More Babysitter Positions Needed

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 28, 12:16AM EDT · Published Aug 7, 7:45AM EDT

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Labor_department_logo_2 The Labor Department just posted a pretty ugly jobs number. Normally we do not pay quite as much attention to the weekly numbers, but they are getting worse and worse. This last week’s report showed 455,000 weekly jobless claims. This was up 7,000 from the 448,000 the week before, which was actually left unchanged.

What is more important than even the number is the perspective. This appears to be the highest number since early in 2002. Yep, that’s right after the 9/11 crisis and right as things were getting really bad.

If you are Dr. Pangloss you can say that maybe this is a top in the jobless claims if this is the worst in over six years. If youare watching trends continue to get worse, then you will think this mayjust be the beginning.

Either way, the good news is that they keep showing us that there is noofficial recession. It’s just a recession for 85% of the country. Itseems that more positions are needed for babysitters and housekeepers,but people can’t pay for them.

Jon C. Ogg
August 7, 2008

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.