Today’s jobless claims report should dispel the notion that the labor market in the United States is getting significantly better.  Initial jobless claims rose again to 551,000 from 534,000 the week prior.  The 4-week average is still an exceedingly high 548,000 and continuing claims are over 6 million  (All figures are seasonally-adjusted. Chart is below).

 
The [...]

The latest jobless claims data is in, with initial claims registering 530,000 and continuing claims coming in at 6.1 million.  These figures are well off the business cycle highs of a few months ago but still quite elevated. 
While the as-reported seasonally adjusted initial claims numbers are in the 500s, the actual initial claims have [...]

Let’s say I run a company. For the sake of argument, we’ll call it a shoe store in New York City. I am making $100,000 net per year now. But, I look around me and see huge opportunity for growth. So I go to my bank and ask for a loan to expand my business.  [...]

Back in April I told you I anticipated an uptick in GDP in part because of changes in inventories – massive change in the inventories. At the time, I thought I was going out on a limb by suggesting we could see positive GDP numbers in Q3 and Q4.  However, this is now the consensus. [...]

The jobless claims numbers have been telling us the same thing for weeks now, namely that the employment market is still weak but that layoffs are gradually slowing.
But,  the unadjusted number of initial claims dropped 59k last week to 407k.  I suspect this was due to a late Labor Day holiday in the States. Nevertheless, [...]

The U.S. Department of Labor confirmed that for yet another week average jobless claims remain in the 560-580K range where they have been for two months. Initial claims for the week ended Sep. 5 were down to 550,000, a decline of 26,000 from the previous week.  And continuing claims dropped as well. 
But my focus [...]

The U.S. economy lost 216,000 jobs in August according to figures released by the Department of Labor. This brought the unemployment rate up to 9.7% from 9.4% in July.  Despite the large rise in the headline unemployment rate (U-3), the figure for job losses was in line with expectations and dovetailed with the figures released [...]

The Department of Labor reported that jobless claims in the latest week decreased 4,000 from a revised 574,000 in the previous week.  The figure was higher than analysts anticipated. Initially, the last week was reported as 570,000.
The 4-week average is now 571,250, marking the eighth consecutive week that initial claims for unemployment insurance have [...]

The August 2009 Manufacturing ISM Report On Business was released and the widely followed PMI Index came in ahead of expectations at 52.9. Expectations were for 50.5. As 50 marks the divide between contraction and expansion, this survey indicates that U.S. manufacturing is expanding for the first time in years.
This is the strongest reading since [...]

The U.S. Department of Labor released the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report showing that initial jobless claims decreased 10,000 in the latest week to 570,000 from an upwardly revised 580,000 the week prior. The 4-week moving average is now 566,250, less than 100,000 off the April peak.
Since the week ended Jul. 18, the average initial [...]