There may be some good news on the jobless claims front. We saw a drop of 53,000 on the weekly jobless claims. The new number was ‘only’ 610,000 for the week. This would have been awful in the past or in any normal economy. Still, it is a drop and indicates that the rate of change is compressing in the jobs and unemployment data.
We now have a continuing claims number of 6.022 million. So, 172,000 more workers are repeat performers on the unemployment payrolls. To put this in performance terms, it has never been this high.
Unemployment will still rise handily with these numbers, and it is not hard at all to find credible economists who think we’ll see double-digits in the unemployment rate here in the U.S. By many counts, we are already there if you count the underemployed and those who have stopped looking for work.
S&P futures are up in positive territory after being down earlier this morning. The criteria for good news is rather different than it used to be.
Jon C. Ogg
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