Pretty decent numbers, though with the rush to get iut our ahead of Thanksgiving, I would wait for the update in a week.
Category: Recession
No Initial Jobless Claims for You!
There are numbers, but the government shutdown makes them totally unreliable.
Have a funny:
It’s Jobless Thursday
And the numbers suck, but as with the past few weeks, there are computer/reporting issues, so the accuracy is suspect:
Claims for U.S. jobless benefits jumped last week to the highest level in six months, providing the first statistical warning that the damage from the partial federal shutdown is starting to ripple through the economy.
While half the increase came from California as the state worked through a backlog following a switch in computer systems, another 15,000 reflected the furlough of non-federal workers from employers losing government business, a Labor Department spokesman said as the data was released to the press. Applications (INJCJC) for unemployment insurance benefits surged by 66,000 in the week ended Oct. 5 to 374,000, the most since late March, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington.
Hopefully, we will start seeing some “normal” numbers in the next few weeks.
It’s Jobless Thursday
The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits edged higher last week but remained at pre-recession levels, a signal of growing strength in the labor market.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 308,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday.
The data could provide some of the strongest guidance this week on the health of the U.S. economy as a partial government shutdown delays the release of economic data, including the monthly employment report which was scheduled to be released on Friday.
In related news, we won’t get last month’s figures on Friday, because there literally three people left working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Greece ……… Is ……… F%$#ed
The leaders of the Greek Fascist Golden Dawn Partywere formally charged with assault and murder:
Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the extremists’ enigmatic leader, was said to be in his pyjamas when police surrounded his home and knocked at the door. Like his second-in-command, Christos Pappas, who subsequently surrendered, and the four MPs who were hauled before a public prosecutor on Tuesday, he stands accused of murder, money-laundering, blackmail and illegal possession of arms.
But they were almost immediately kicked loose on bail:
Three senior lawmakers from Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn were freed on Wednesday pending trial on criminal charges, an unexpected setback to the government’s efforts to clamp down on a party it has labelled a neo-Nazi criminal gang.
The decision to free the men after an 18-hour court session raises questions about the solidity of the state’s case against Golden Dawn after one of its sympathisers stabbed to death an anti-fascism rapper.
Party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris and fellow lawmakers Ilias Panagiotaros and Nikos Michos stormed out of the court to cheers of “bravo” from supporters. They kicked and shoved journalists out of the way before hailing a taxi.
“We will not back down!” Michos shouted. “You can only stop us with bullets. Even from the grave, we will rise up – know this well!”
The parallels between a certain beer hall putsch of a failed painter are rather alarming.
The Euro looks to be doing the same job of stabilizing Europe during a depression as the mindless fixation on the gold standard of the German central bank did in the 1930s.
It’s Jobless Thursday
The number of initial claims, 292,000, sounds good, but there were problems with the statistics:
Initial jobless claims fell to their lowest level last week since the spring of 2006, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Or not.
The reported figure, which estimated that jobless claims had dropped to 292,000, about 31,000 fewer than the week before, seemingly suggested that the economy was finally entering a self-sustaining recovery on the back of a healing job market.
The number, however, is unreliable, the government said, skewed by upgrades on two state computer systems that caused those states to underreport claims. The total number of initial jobless claims is almost certainly higher than reported, though nobody knows the scope of the mismeasurement at this point.
The data malfunction has called into question the accuracy of a major leading indicator, one scrutinized by investors, economists and policy makers alike. It also shined a light on the imperfect and often outdated systems that states and the federal government use to provide benefits to workers and cull data on the labor market and the broader economy — a situation that some experts warn might become even worse because of the $1 trillion in budget cuts spread over 10 years known as sequestration.
The Labor Department would not confirm which two states had issues or guess as to the scope of the mismeasurement. But Nevada confirmed that it had not reported complete claims data to the federal government because of a computer upgrade.
So basically, the numbers won’t mean anything until next week, when the revision comes in.
The shortened Labor Day week probably skewed the numbers too, or at least made it harder for Nevada and a state to be named at a later date to get their act together with regard to the computer update..
Today’s Economic Data Points
US consumer confidence “unexpectedly: fell in August.
Considering the fact that hourly wages fell in July, (Inflation hewed fairly close to the 2% desired by the Fed) I do not consider this too much of a surprise, particularly when juxtaposed with the fall in the Philly Fed index and overall industrial production being flat.
This is the definition of a recovery that I was previously unaware of.
It’s Jobless Thursday
Initial unemployment claims rose by 5,000 to 333,000, though the less volatile 4-week moving average fell to the lowest number in almost 6 years.
Continuing claims rose slightly.
It’s not a bad report, particularly when compared to Greece, where the May unemployment number was revised upward to 27.6%:
Greece’s jobless rate hit a new record high of 27.6 percent in May, official national data showed on Thursday as the country staggers under austerity linked to its international bailout.
Record joblessness is a nightmare for Greece’s two-party coalition government as it scrambles to hit fiscal targets and show there is light at the end of the tunnel after years of unpopular tax rises and cuts to wages and pensions.
Unemployment rose to 27.6 percent from an upwardly revised 27.0 percent reading in April, according to data from statistics service ELSTAT and was more than twice the average rate in the euro zone which stood at 12.1 percent in June.
This is grim, and the two mainstream parties have absolutely failed to do anything to fix this, and it is highly unlikely that they can do what it takes, given that step one is to stand up to German politicians spinning morality tales.
That leaves us with the left leaning SYRIZA party, or the the Fascist, nativist, and racist Golden Dawn party (see the party symbol on the right).
If history is true to form, the 1930s, it’s going to be the Fascists who win this, and given that we are already seeing Fascism lite in Hungary, this has very unpleasant historical echos.
It’s Jobless Thursday!!!
Initial claims hit a 5 year low, with the 4-week moving average, continuing claims, and emergency claims falling as well.
Additionally, 2nd quarter GDP increase was adjusted up to a 1.7% annual rate (forcast was for 1.0%), though this was because the 1st quarter was revised down from 1.8% to 1.1%, meaning that the end position pretty much matched estimates.
It’s an artifact of the ill advised deal that gave us the sequester, because the federal spending cuts to a large degree offset good numbers from the manufacturing sector.
July job numbers come out tomorrow.
It’s Jobless Thursday!!!
Initial claims rose by 7K to 343,000, though the less volatile 4 week moving average fell by 1250, as did both continuing and extended claims.
Generally, a decent set of numbers.
The Fed Speaks
They won’t be stopping the stimulus, but the short version is that they will continue to keep their foot on accelerator, but maybe not quite so much:
The Federal Reserve, increasingly confident in the durability of economic growth, expects to start pulling back later this year from its efforts to stimulate the economy, the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said on Wednesday.
Mr. Bernanke, offering new details, said the central bank intends to scale down gradually its monthly purchases of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed bonds beginning later this year and ending when the unemployment rate hits 7 percent, which the Fed expects to happen by the middle of next year.
The central bank would then take several more years to unwind the rest of its extraordinary stimulus campaign, slowly raising short-term interest rates from essentially zero to more normal levels after the jobless rate has fallen to 6.5 percent or lower.
He emphasized, however, that the timing of the retreat depends on the health of the economy; if growth falters, the central bank would slow, or even reverse, the process. The expectations of Fed officials for the next several years, published Wednesday, are more optimistic than the consensus of private forecasters.
Pulling back “would basically say that we’ve had a relatively decent economic outcome in terms of sustained improvement in growth and unemployment,” Mr. Bernanke said. “If things are worse, we will do more. If things are better, we will do less.”
I would prefer that they target a higher inflation rate until unemployment falls before 6%, but who listens to me.
It’s Jobless Thursday!!!
Good Week.
Initial jobless claims fell to 346,000, as did continuing claims, though the 4-week moving average rose.
OK, but not great.
It’s Jobless Thursday!!
And initial jobless claims rose by 10,000 to 354,000, with the 4-week moving average rising 6,750 to 347,250, continuing claims rising by 63,000 to 2.99 million.
The number of emergency claims fell by 50,000 to 1.73 million, but much of that could be claim exhaustion.
So the numbers are a bit worse than they were last week, but still not too bad.
An unalloyed good number however is that pending sales of existing homes sales hit a three-year high, though I am worried that the purchase of homes as rental properties might be the latest bubble.
It’s Jobless Thursday!
And the numbers are not great:
The number of people who applied last week for new unemployment benefits surged to the highest level in a month and a half, indicating the U.S. labor market is still not healing fast enough to rapidly bring down the nation’s jobless rate.
Initial jobless claims climbed by 32,000 to a seasonally adjusted 360,000 in the week ended May 11, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected claims to rise to 330,000 from a revised 328,000 in the prior week.
It should be noted that the 4-week moving average only rose by 1250, and continuing claims fell 4,000.
It’s Jobless Thursday
God news again, with initial claims falling by 4000 to 323,000, a 5-year low, with the 4-week moving average falling to 336,750, continuing claims falling by 27K to 3.01 million, and exgtended claims falling by 14.5K to 1.76 Million.
Monthly Jobs Numbers are Relatively Decent
176,000 jobs added to the non-farm payroll in April, which is somewhat better than natural growth in the labor force, and additionally, the adjustments to February and March added 100,000 to the NFP.
It should be noted thought, that this really is only a bit better than treading water:
The American economy continues to add jobs in proportion to population growth. Nothing less, nothing more.
The share of American adults with jobs has barely changed since 2010, hovering between 58.2 percent and 58.7 percent. This employment-to-population ratio stood at 58.6 percent in April. That is about four percentage points lower than the employment rate before the recession, a difference of roughly 10 million jobs. In other words, the United States economy is not getting any closer to recreating the jobs lost during the recession.
And here is the scary quote:
Furthermore, the projections were wrong. Participation has actually risen among people older than 55. The decline is entirely driven by younger dropouts.
So, better, but our economy still sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.
It’s Jobless Thursday!!!!
Good news everyone!The initial jobless claim numbers came out today, and the numbers are pretty good:
Initial jobless claims — a rough gauge of layoffs — sank by 18,000 to a seasonally adjusted 324,000 in the week ended April 27, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s the lowest level since January 2008.
………
Meanwhile, the four-week average of new claims, which smooths out weekly volatility, fell by 16,000 to 342,250. That’s the smallest amount in six weeks.
The number of people already receiving benefits, known as continuing claims, rose by 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 3.02 million in the week ended April 20. Most states typically offer 26 weeks of unemployment pay.
Decent numbers.
The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
Unemployment in the Euro Zone has hit a record high, and there is still no sign of inflation:
The latest eurozone unemployment data, due at 10am BST, is expected to show the region’s jobless rate has risen to a new record high of 12.1% in March (from 12% last month).
Italy’s unemployment rate is also forecast to increase, showing the challenges facing its new government as it strives to drag the country back to growth.
And in Spain, new GDP data will doubtless confirm that the country’s economy contracted again in the first three months of 2013 (economists expect a fall of 0.5%).
………
Eurostat also reported this morning that inflation across the Eurozone has fallen to just 1.2% in April. That’s a sharp fall on March’s 1.7%, and a much smaller rise in the cost of living than analysts had expected.
That makes it more likely that the European Central Bank will bow to pressure and cut interest rates at its next monthly meeting on Thursday.
Austerity is not working.
GDP Numbers Are Out
We saw a 2.5% annualized growth rate for the 1st quarter, which is kind of “meh”, and below the 3% forecast, though the miss was largely driven by a fall in defense spending.
Consumer spending was reasonably robust.
Consumer sentiment fell, and inflation is still well below the Fed’s 2% target rate, which is IMNSHO lowere than it should be in this situation anyway.
It’s Jobless Thursday!
Initial claims fell to 339,000, the 4-week moving average fell to 357,500, and continuing claims fell by 93K to 3 million.
Good numbers.