Posted on 05/02/2013 7:14:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
There were 324,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, down 18,000 from the previous week's 342,000, the Employment and Training Administration reports.
Claims continue to run around the lowest pace since early 2008 — they haven't been lower since a week in mid-January 2008 when they came in at 321,000.
Bloomberg News writes that the drop indicates "companies are retaining staff even as the economy cools."
We'll learn much more about the labor market Friday, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics is due to release data on the April unemployment rate and job growth. Bloomberg says that economists expect to hear that a modest 145,000 jobs were added to payrolls and that the jobless rate held steady at 7.6 percent.
Update at 9:30 a.m. ET. Layoffs Down Too:
Also this morning, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that in April, "job cuts fell to their lowest level since December, as U.S. employers announced plans to trim payrolls by 38,121. ... April job cuts were 23 percent lower than March, when announced layoffs totaled 49,255. They were 6.0 percent lower than the 40,559 planned job cuts announced in April 2012. April represents the lowest job-cut month since last December, when 32,556 were tracked by Challenger."
It’s FUN WITH NUMBERS Thursday!!!
What happens when the pool of people who can be laid off dries up. There’s no one left to fire.
The real question is: How many this week left the unemployment force to join the disability force, so as to keep unemployment steady?
And how many have simply given up on finding a job and fallen right off the charts?
How many with higher education and/or years of high level experience are flipping burgers or mopping floors?
Don’t tell me the economy’s rebounding; I’ve seen what’s going on out there and it sucks big time.
There should be a corresponding increase in job hires but that’s not being seen.
When no one has a job left... then we will be at 100% employment... wait... what?????
LLS
And how many have simply given up on finding a job and fallen right off the charts?
Isn’t it amazing how these lame asses can make the ones who have given up look good in the headline: Jobless Claims Fall?...These buttsheads think we all are low information voters? Ha!
Exactly. If 10000 people have jobs and 1% get laid off, that is ten people. If only 8000 people have jobs and 1% get laid off, that is fewer people getting laid off (8), but, not an improvement.
BUNK.
We have a large unemployed population.
That is not improving. What is happening is they are dropping off the unemployment rolls and onto various support groups.
We have a large unemployed population.
China by contrast has a very low unemployed population.
Odd how dramatically things have changed, in just two short decades.
What do you do when you’ve cut to the bone, and any more cutting means turning out the lights?
That’s where we are.
Each week there are fewer people in the “looking for work” pool.
Many have starved to death or died of old age.
Yet Obama is still “focused like a laser” on job creation.
Why just last week while he was playing golf he had another job creation idea.
It was a warm day and he thought “they should hire more peons so I could have someone bring me a cool drink whenever I want.”
The man never takes a rest from thinking of ways he can help us.
Those who have run out of their 99 weeks of unemployment are not counted as unemployed. Who but the devious government would figure the rate this way?
The new normal.
We are still not at the bottom of the down turn as we continue to layoff this many people every week. I think the reason for the lower numbers is for several reasons.
1. Many people are dropping out of the job market so they are not being laid off again and again, creating new claims.
2. Claims are also annual based so many layoffs are not reported in this figure. Let me explain: A person gets laid off from a salary job. Their claim is open for 1 year. So, if they take another job then get laid off again within that year there isn’t an additional claim reported. Many employers also know this and lay people off using this timeline so the claim doesn’t go against them.
3. States are backlogged and not reporting those trying to open a claim but the system is clogged and claims are taking as long as 90 days or more to open.
4. Not sure on this one, but many full time jobs are now part time. Many salary employee jobs have been converted to contractor/hourly. I suspect somewhere in those UI numbers that is a benefit to reporting a lower number of unemployed.
So, over a quarter of a million new jobless people entered the rolls? Am understanding that right? So, Obamasan has cured all ills, yet we have over 300,000 new people on the welfare rolls.
Amazing that these people so easily get disability and I have been in a fight with VA for over 20 regarding my disability for wounds and injuries while on active duty. In the 1990s it took me over 5 years of appeals to get disability. I have recently started a new round of arguments and probably appeals on disability on my back, which the VA says I have no back problems, yet two back surgeries and spinal fusion with posts and hardware inserted into my back, nothing is wrong according to them. The beat goes on.
RE: So, over a quarter of a million new jobless people entered the rolls?
This is of course, just one side of the equation, it has to be balanced out in the net by the number of people being HIRED.
The net comes out positive of course.
ADP just announced 119,000 private sector jobs created last April (pathetic but still positive).
See here:
That'll be explaining it, then.
Thank you for your service, and healing thoughts re your back.
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