Immense Pain in Jobless Claims

The Labor Department just delivered the weekly jobless claims and the numbers are startling even if seasonality is a large issue in January as retailers and transport companies trim back on their holiday temporary hires.  The figure rose by 51,000 up to 454,000 for the week.  The week before was revised to 403,000 from 404,000.

Dow Jones and Bloomberg both had estimates of 405,000.

The four-week average rose by 15,750 to 428,750 jobs and the army of unemployed measured by the continuing jobless claims rose by 94,000 to 3.991 million.

Four states reported increases due to weather, and the normal seasonality issues were an obvious impact here.  Still, a rise by this much hurts the morale of those looking for the long overdue jobs recovery.  The report might not constitute a double dip recession fear, but this is just staggering and will take away from the belief that jobs are meaningfully recovering even if they are recovering here and there.

There is a saying that says, “The beating will continue until morale improves.”  In this case, morale has nothing to do with it.  The beatings continue.

JON C. OGG