The average from 1967-Present is 363,000. the current 4-week moving average is 343,500 which is 5% below the long run average. The claims environment has been "back to normal" for a while now.
Posted on 03/28/2013 6:14:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
WASHINGTON--The number of Americans claiming first-time unemployment benefits rose for the second week in a row, a possible sign that the labor market lost a bit of momentum.
Initial jobless claims, an indication of layoffs, increased by 16,000 to a seasonally adjusted 357,000 in the week ended March 23, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was above economists' forecast of 340,000 new claims.
The latest week's gain came after claims rose 7,000 to a revised 341,000 in the week ended March 16.
The four-week moving average, which smoothes out week-to-week volatility in the data, rose by 2,250 to 343,000. Even with the slight rise, the level remains below the 400,000 that economists believe is the threshold indicating a strengthening labor market.
The labor market generally has picked up since the new year. Unemployment fell to 7.7% in February from 7.9% the prior month, with employers adding 236,000 jobs last month.
Still, unemployment remains historically high, and Federal Reserve officials expect only slight improvement in the labor market for the rest of the year. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last week described the recent improvement in the labor market as modest. Fed officials signaled they don't plan to end the central bank's stimulus programs, including $85 billion a month in bond purchases, any time soon.
The labor market is also facing headwinds, including the roughly $85 billion in federal spending cuts, under the so- called sequester, that began this month.
Thursday's data showed the number of continuing unemployment benefit claims--those drawn by workers for more than a week--decreased by 27,000 to 3,050,000 in the week ended March 16. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag.
(Excerpt) Read more at nasdaq.com ...
Our unemployment is making no progress at all.
Stop sending US jobs overseas, especially stop sending US jobs to China.
China now out-exports America, and all the trends are in China’s favor.
Wake up people. Bring back US jobs.
But the news was so absolutely positive last week, I thought we turned the cor[o]ner...
After all, last weeks great unemployment news was one weeks in a row of fantastic weekly news reports.
RE: Stop sending US jobs overseas, especially stop sending US jobs to China.
How do we outlaw that?
You do have to wonder if the US can really measure the economy... & then react to it!
The job market had momentum?
Well, yeah, it does, but not in the direction the Current Regime would have us think it is going.
About momentum -
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
And we continue to lose control of the language.
We need to legally encourage American jobs to stay in America.
Already China out-exports America. We are number two.
China’s markets are NOT open. We are fools to treat China as an open opponent.
China is becoming a global threat.
Obama will find a way to blame this on the sequester and unfortunately, he will probably be successful in persuading the public that this is the case.
Do I really need a /sarc???
The average from 1967-Present is 363,000. the current 4-week moving average is 343,500 which is 5% below the long run average. The claims environment has been "back to normal" for a while now.
I think it was Recovery v6.4 last week.
I’d like to see that copied with the Chinese jobs chart.
China’s doing just fine, with all America’s former jobs.
That is exactly my point. For three decades we have been firing Americans, and sending their jobs overseas.
Bring them back!
Bovine excrement.
Not counting structural unemployment [probably dropped out of workforce years ago], if the economy had frictional and cyclical unemployment of 250,000 then you would see a strengthening labor market [and real, albeit small GDP growth]. You need to get to about 160,000 to see any significant growth in the economy or a stabilizing labor market.
Who writes this stuff anyway?
5.56mm
It's not as simple as it's a trend around the world:
It’s not, as some hypothesize, related to changes in trade balance (imports vs. exports), etc. Rather, as the authors of the book explain, it’s basically due to consistent productivity growth that allows industrialized economies to turn out the same amount of goods with a smaller workforce. Now, Matthews’s post is entitled “This chart will change how you think about manufacturing” — maybe it should or shouldn’t, but it probably wouldn’t if you’d read Jim Manzi’s piece in National Affairs in 2010, which actually made the same point, with a remarkably similar chart:
What this means is that the president’s campaign plan to revive America’s labor force with manufacturing employment almost certainly won’t work — leaving aside the fact that it’s also quite poor economic policy to encourage any particular sector, but least of all one that just happens to make people feel warm and patriotic.
I’ll give you a hint:
Last I heard, China’s unemployment rate was 4.1%.
We are subsidizing, and constantly strengthening the Chinese worker.
China now exports more than America.
We are due to fall the number 2 in world trade, by the NEXT ELECTION.
Wake up people. We are doing it wrong.
In the last 50+ years unemployment claims have never once dropped to 160,000 and were only under 200,000 for a period in the late 1960's. Since 1970 they have never been blow 200,000. The average since 1967 is 363,000.
LOL. Okay so what is your genius plan to all of a sudden create more manufacturing jobs? This should be good...
Not too much, advocating any particular approach.
I have on maybe 3 occasions taken a particular stand on trade. Mostly I leave “what” to do open.
Other than bring back US jobs.
That’s so past-tense as to be ridiculous. Go into any Target or Wal*Mart and start down any aisle.
I’m series.
Everything will have been made in China.
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