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<p>The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose less than expected last week, suggesting an acceleration in job growth in September.</p> <p>Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 293,000 for the week ended Sept.20, the Labor Department said on Thursday.</p>

The unemployment rate has (once again) disappointed. The problem people, is that America continues to export jobs. Not goods. Jobs.

If unemployment benefits were cut off earlier in 2013, the long-term unemployed would have been more likely to be re-employed, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. If the benefits, called the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, expired earlier in 2013, “workers with 46 or more weeks of continuous unemployment would have been 1.2 to 2.1 percentage points more likely to become re-employed,” the St. Louis Fed reported. “Similarly, the long-term unemployed would have been 0.4 to 0.5 percentage points more likely to exit the labor force entirely.”

Economists in a consensus survey expected weekly initial jobless claims to dip by 2,000 to 310,000. ( full story here http://www.cnbc.com/id/101753584 )

Once upon a time in America, grown men were expected to work a job, women were expected to stay home with the kids, and families were expected to cover expenses with their own earnings. There was no welfare state to step in for the unfortunate, or the feckless. This was the land for which the "unemployment rate" was invented. The "unemployment rate" was a pretty good tool for measuring the problem of workless-ness in that long-forgotten America. But we don't live in that country any more. Consequently, our old-fashioned "unemployment rate" has become an increasingly inaccurate barometer for measuring the...

Not only can the nation’s unemployment rate be manipulated, it is easy to do. And it wouldn’t take a team of conspirators, as a federal investigator alleged, to accomplish that feat. In its report last week, the Commerce Department Inspector General’s office said it found no attempt to manipulate the unemployment statistics during the last presidential election, when the jobless rate suddenly fell sharply. The IG’s most important point: the jobless rate couldn’t be rigged even if someone wanted to because too many people would have to be involved. Let me give you the exact statement from the report: “Addressing...

WASHINGTON - The news is filled with bleak reports that continue to cast a pall of gloom over many Americans who say life for them is a daily struggle. Two deeply troubling stories appearing in the papers this week were typical of the growing problems that afflict so many Americans in a still very weak, job-deficient, low-paying economy. A front page story in The Washington Post under the headline, "A choice between buying books and eating," reports that "more college students are going hungry." "The number of food pantries on college campuses has increased rapidly in the past six years...

<p>The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose less than expected last week, pointing to some underlying strength in the labor market.</p> <p>Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 320,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims for the week ended March 8 were unrevised.</p>

So far in 2014, initial unemployment claims have been largely stuck, though we were supposed to see some progress this morning. According to the new figures from the Labor Department, we didn’t: The number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits jumped by 14,000 to 348,000 last week to match a five-week high, the Labor Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected claims to total 335,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis. The average of new claims over the past month, a more reliable gauge than the volatile weekly number, was unchanged at 338,250.

Yes, I suppose it’s true that most of the rest of the world works a lot less than Americans do. Their GDPs-per-capita and/or their debt-to-GDP ratios generally tend to correlate accordingly, but whatever. Via RCP:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO What the Congressional Budget Office is saying is that we’re going to discourage kids having to have latchkeys. We’re going to have parents being able to come home, working reasonable hours. People are going to be able to retire. People might be able to actually cook dinner rather than have to order out and get some takeout. I mean, the...

1,154,000 fewer Americans are working today than six years ago, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In January 2008, 146,378,000 Americans 16 and over were employed, and now in January 2014, 145,224,000 are employed, a difference of 1,154,000.

<p>U.S. equity markets zipped higher Friday after a round of weak jobs data inspired hopes the Fed may take more time to boost rates and cut its bond-purchasing program.</p> <p>As of 9:32 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 53.3 points, or 0.35%, to 15675, the S&P 500 gained 8.5 points, or 0.48%, to 1783 and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 28.4 points, or 0.69%, to 4084.</p>

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, in a boost to the labor market outlook and the broader economy. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits declined 20,000 to a seasonally adjusted 331,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims for the prior week were revised to show 3,000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast first-time applications for jobless benefits falling to 335,000 in the week ended Feb. 1. The four-week moving average for new claims, considered a better measure of underlying labor market conditions as...

Democrats are increasingly employing a new tack in the battle over a projected reduction of two million jobs due to Obamacare, saying the decline is actually the result of people not being required to work anymore when they don't want to -- a concept labeled "job lock.""Yesterday, the CBO projected that by 2021 the Affordable Care Act will enable more than 2 million workers to escape 'job-lock' – the situation where workers remain tied to employers for access to health insurance benefits," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) office said in a news release.The release continued: "In addition to being...

(CNN) -- The White House has secured commitments from some of the nation's largest companies for a plan to boost hiring of the long-term unemployed. "What we have done is to gather together 300 companies, just to start with, including, some of the top 50 companies in the country, companies like Walmart, and Apple, Ford and others, to say let's establish best practices," President Barack Obama told CNN Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper in an exclusive interview. "Because they've been unemployed ... so long, folks are looking at that gap in the resume and they're weeding them out before these...

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week, but the underlying trend suggested the labor market continued to heal. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 348,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Claims for the prior week were revised to show 3,000 more applications received than previously reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast first-time applications for jobless benefits rising to 330,000 in the week ended January 25. The four-week moving average for new claims, considered a better measure of underlying labor market conditions as it...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will announce a new plan next week to help Americans who continue to struggle to find jobs even as the economy recovers from recession, his senior adviser, Dan Pfeiffer, said on Saturday. Obama's efforts to help the long-term unemployed are part of an economic strategy he will lay out in his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday and expound upon during a four-state tour, Pfeiffer said in a mass email from the White House. "With some action on all our parts, we can help more job seekers find work, and more working...

The United Nations’ labor agency says the number of unemployed people around the world rose above 200 million last year as job opportunities failed to grow at the same pace as the global workforce. The International Labor Organization said Monday that an estimated 201.8 million people were unemployed in 2013. That’s 4.9 million more than the previous year. …

Five years in to Barack Obama’s presidency, the number of African-Americans participating in the labor force has hit rock bottom. The news media has ignored this stunning revelation from Friday’s monthly jobs report by the Labor Department. The exception has been PBS, which interviewed economist Dean Baker who had written about it in a report published Friday. “The drop in labor force participation was sharpest for African Americans, who saw a decline of 0.3 percentage points to 60.2 percent, the lowest rate since December of 1977. The rate for African American men fell 0.7 percentage points to 65.6 percent, the...

Month after month, the reports are announced: Job losses outpace job gains, every month. Hundreds of thousands leave the workforce, every month. The new jobs – what few there are – are more likely to be part-time than full-time, and to be lower-paying than the ones lost. Too often, the new jobs are the career-enders, not the career starters that new jobs need to be. The story of the cooked books of the unemployment statistics is old news. For years now, the government reports have been leaving out the “non-participation” rate, so the unemployment percentage today bears no resemblance to...