Economic Data

On Wednesday morning the U.S. Department of Labor released the latest report on claims for unemployment insurance. The week to December 20th saw 586,000 new claims for unemployment insurance on a seasonally-adjusted basis, which is a…

The U.S. Department of Labor reported a fall from a revised 575,000 jobless claims don to a still very elevated 554,000 this past week. On the whole these numbers demonstrate that many jobs are being lost and that the December unemployment…

Weekly jobless claims rose in the U.S. to the highest level since 1982, signaling a further deterioration in the U.S. employment market. The seasonally-adjusted number for initial claims was 573,000 while the real number was an eye-popping…

The Bureau of Labor Statistics just released this month's unemployment report and the data were grim.  The unemployment rate rose to 6.7%, while the economy shed 533,000 jobs - the largest decline since 1974.  The result was widely expected…

U.S. Jobless claims are out again and the data are mixed. The past week saw a drop in seasonally-adjusted claims from 530,000 to 509,000. Meanwhile, continuing claims rose on a seasonally-adjusted basis from 3,962,000 to 4,087,000. While…

Unemployment claims declined this week to 529,000 from a reading of 542,000 last week. These are very high numbers -- the highest figures in this business cycle. Despite the drop, all of the changes were related to seasonal factors as the…

Unemployment claims rose to a monster reading of 542,000 last week. This is easily the highest figure in this business cycle and represents the largest number in 16 years. As with last week, there was absolutely nothing to like about this…

Because I was out of commission pretty much all day on Friday, I haven't been able to crunch the U.S. retail sales numbers until now. But, let me do a recap today and breakdown what these numbers might mean for the U.S. economy. The…

516,000. That's the number of people who filed for employment claims this past week. This is the highest number we have seen since September 2001, just after 9/11. The last time we saw claims over 500,000 before that was July 1992.…