The Labor Department has just issued its report on weekly jobless claims. The hopes that we’d finally get back under 500,00 were dashed as the claims rose by a revised 11,000 bodies to a new reading of 531,000 for the week. The prior weeks revision went from 514,000 to 520,000, a reading that also went the wrong way. Consensus readings last seen were 518,000 from Dow Jones and 519,000 from Bloomberg.
The four-week moving average of new claims dropped by 750 to 532,250. The wild card here came in the army of the continuing jobless claims fell by 98,000 to 5,923,000 from the prior week’s revised count of 6,021,000. This drop in continuing claims may be from people dropping out of the system, but this is the lowest reading since April or March.
We would note that no economists were expecting a drop to under the 500,000 level. We were hoping to see that become at least a closer reality based on all of the stabilization. It seems as though we are still in nothing more than a great jobless recovery.
JON C. OGG
OCTOBER 22, 2009
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