Jobs

Unadjusted jobless claims after the holiday season are always monstrous because of seasonality. Last week 645,571 people filed initial claims for unemployment insurance in the United States.  That is down from the 731,958 who filed at…

Initial jobless claims of 432,000 for the week ended 26 Dec 2009 were the lowest since July 2008. The 4-week average is now 460,250, the lowest since September 2008. If you look at the following two graphs, you can see that initial claims…

From this past week's Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report released today: In the week ending Dec. 19, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 452,000, a decrease of 28,000 from the previous week's unrevised…

The latest WSJ/NBC News poll shows that President Obama’s approval rating has now slipped under 50%. This makes his the steepest first year decline in modern history. Why?  You know what I would say: Obama doesn’t know when to be…

Initial jobless claims for the week ended December 12th came in at a seasonally-adjusted (SA) 480,000, which is a rise of 7,000 from the previous week.  This brings the 4-week SA average down to 467,500, the lowest in 15-months. …

Below is the latest from John Mauldin via his weekly newsletter. John expects a double dip recession as I do. Here he talks about what I call structurally high private sector unemployment i.e. unemployment in the private sector that cannot…

The weekly jobless claims figure came in at 474,000. That is up 17,000 from the previous week. Revisions of the two prior weeks put the net surge at 18,000. The 4-week average is 473,750. All numbers are seasonally-adjusted. This latest…

Paul Krugman and Bruce Bartlett debated on PBS whether President Obama should divert money from the TARP program to a jobs program to combat high unemployment (Hat tip Mark Thoma).  Here is the video and a transcript of part of the…

I am not sure I buy Meredith Whitney's assertion that the government is “out of bullets” in its quest to prop up the economy. It’s a matter of political will more than anything else. Nevertheless, I do agree with her basic premise in the…