Posted on 01/16/2014 6:27:03 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The number of people who filed for unemployment assistance in the U.S. last week fell to a six-week low, fueling optimism over the U.S. labor market, official data showed on Thursday.
n a report, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending January 11 declined by 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 326,000 from the previous week’s revised total of 328,000.
Analysts had expected U.S. jobless claims to hold steady at 328,000 last week.
Continuing jobless claims in the week ended January 4 rose to 3.030 million from 2.856 million in the preceding week. Analysts had expected continuing claims to fall to 2.848 million.
The four-week moving average was 335,000, a decrease of 13,500 from the previous week's average of 348,500. The monthly average is seen as a more accurate gauge of labor trends because it reduces volatility in the week-to-week data.
Following the release of the data, the U.S. dollar inched lower against the euro, with EUR/USD adding 0.05% to trade at 1.3612, compared to 1.3604 ahead of the data.
Meanwhile, U.S. stock futures pointed to a lower open. The Dow Jones Industrial Average futures pointed to a loss of 0.3% at the open, S&P 500 futures dipped 0.3%, while the Nasdaq 100 futures indicated a downtick of 0.25% at the open.
What's that word again? UNEXPECTEDLY.
Time for Obama to pump up some more green jobs.
I know it seems as if it doesn’t add up, but the 1,000,000 people losing their jobs each month, is offset by 1,078,000 who found new jobs during that month, there fore the +78,000 number.
They tout the meager drop (which will in fact, be an increase when they ‘adjust’ next week), but they bury the fact that continuing claims are at a five year high.
That is 40 fewer per state, boys and girls. Whoop-de-do.
Could it be that they’re starting to run out of first-time filers? You can’t have several hundred thousand dropping out from the labor pool every month without it affecting new unemployment claims.
Thank you for stating the obvious! Too bad that the idiots in the media are so star struck by Obama that they are unable to do easy math.
Less than 100,000 NEW jobs are added every month in an economy that requires 250,000 new jobs monthly just to stay ahead of the new additions to the job market. However since 500,000 plus people drop out of the job market monthly, there is a drop in the Unemployment Rate. Add to that the massive mount of early retirees and people jumping onto disability and we find out that we have fewer people actually working today than we did years ago!
This is a disaster and we have been ill served by the fourth estate as to how we can stop it and why we are slipping into third world status.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.