The Labor Department has released its figures for the weekly jobless claims came in at 521,000 versus a revised figure of 554,000 last week (originally reported as 551,000). Bloomberg had a consensus reading of 540,000, so this is going to add more support for the crowd betting on a recovery. The army of the ongoing unemployed measured by the continuing jobless claims fell to 6.04 million from a revised level of 6.112 million a week ago. We also saw a drop in the 4-week average to 539,750 claims.
The good news here is that we are now getting closer to the sub-6 million mark. The news is continuing to get less-bad here, but as we have noted these figures need to get closer to 400,000 per week before there will be any meaningful halt to the growth of each month’s unemployment figures.
JON C. OGG
October 8, 2009
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