The U.S. Labor Department just released the weekly jobless claims and the reading fell by 42,000 down to 415,000. The week’s reading from a week ago was revised to 457,000 from 454,000. Dow Jones had estimates of roughly 423,000.
The four-week average hardly budged to 430,500. The army of unemployed measured by the continuing jobless claims fell by 84,000 to 3,925,000 as of two weeks ago.
In a separate release for the fourth quarter of 2010, the Nonfarm productivity rose by 2.6% versus 2.0% expected. Unit labor costs, the measure of wage inflation, is non-existent as the rate fell by -0.6% versus expectations for a flat reading. The Q4 figures compared to Q3 revised figures of 2.3% in productivity and -0.1% in the unit labor costs.
Another week with a drop, but nothing anywhere close enough to move the needle on the super-high unemployment rate yet.
JON C. OGG
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