Weekly Jobless Claims, From Poor to Poorer

The count is growing… Weekly jobless claims as a figure is still headed the wrong way and still above that awful 400,000 line.  The Labor Department reported that jobless claims in the last week rose 2,000 to 414,000.  Bloomberg had the consensus at 408,000.  The unrevised figure from the week before was 409,000 versus the revised figure of 412,000.

This report also showed that the four-week average rose by 3,750 to 414,750.

Measuring the army of the unemployed via the continuing jobless claims somehow fell by 30,000 to
3,717,000, although this figure has a one-week lag to the data.

It was just yesterday that we showed a cycle peak in job openings.  Unfortunately, the average job has over 4.3 applicants per opening and that means that there are many jobs that have exponentially higher applicants per position than that figure.  After the net zero on the non-farm payrolls created in August there is just very little to be excited about here.

The drum beats on…

JON C. OGG