Weekly jobless claims are heading the wrong direction again this morning, although some of this may still have some seasonality to it. The Labor Department showed a gain of 15,000 jobless claims to 576,000 from a revised 561,000 claims from 558,000 the week before. This represents the highest reading in three weeks. We also saw a rise of 4,250 to 570,000 on the four-week average and the continuing claims of repeat benefit takers rose by 2,000 to 6,241,000 jobless. The good news is that these are still not coming in above the 600,000 mark. The bad news is that these are heading the wrong way and are not indicative of any major growth nor any major recovery. We still have some questions about how that 9.4% unemployment wasn’t higher, and that is without even tallying up the unofficial unemployment of those workers who have dropped out of the system or who are significantly underemployed or on contract.
JON C. OGG
August 20, 2009
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