Jobs

My very first post on this blog was in March and it was titled "The Economy Is Definitely In Recession." Back then, this seemed like a stretch for a lot of people, but today the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which makes the…

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…

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.…

After stalling at 6.1% in September, the U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 6.5%. This was a truly ugly report as we saw payrolls go down by 240,000 - more than forecast and September was revised up significantly from 169,000 to 284,000.…

Tomorrow is the day that we get a big piece of the data puzzle for the U.S. when the unemployment report is released. Most economists are expecting something very ugly with over 200,000 jobs lost. In the interim, we might be able to use…

No change. That's what we see from this week's jobless claims numbers. The 4-week average number is up 145,750 from a year ago. That's a bonus because three weeks ago this number was 166,500 and has fallen for three weeks on the trot.…

Jobless claims came in at 478,000 for the previous week, up from 463,000 the week before. But continuing claims were down 6,000 on the week to 3.720 million from 3.726 million.While the one-week continuing claims number is fine, all…

As we move beyond the market panic, we can zero in on the data that define the economy. Employment is one of four key areas that define the economy -- the others being production, earnings growth and consumer spending.So, jobless claims…

Yesterday, I laid out some of my general thinking on the business cycle and the economy. Obviously, understanding the business cycle is important to economic forecasting and is, therefore, central to personal financial planning, general…