The Labor Department has released its latest data on weekly jobless claims. The figure came in at 627,000, a gain of 15,000. We had a Dow Jones consensus looking for 605,000 and Bloomberg had 613,000 listed as the consensus estimates. We also saw a revision here on the prior week’s claims to 612,000 from a previous report of 608,000.
Again, the largest issue at hand here is not just the weekly numbers. It is the continuing jobless claims, the army of unemployed workers who are back more than once to collect unemployment benefits. This came in as another gain by 29,000 to 6,738,000 compared to a level of 6,687,000 listed the week before.
The four-week average also was reported as 617,250 rather than 615,750 last week. The White House is already targeting 10% unemployment. There is no reason to think they are sandbagging those numbers.
This is still heading in the wrong direction even for the crowd looking solely for green shoots. The hope has been for a week or two of reports under the 600,000 mark. The problem is that jobless claims have to dip under 500,000 before you will start seeing any real slowing in the unemployment rate getting higher and higher.
Jon C. Ogg
June 25, 2009
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