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Thursday, October 11, 2012

2012 / Economy Jobless Claims Fall to Four and a Half Year Low

Posted by Goldy on Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 7:10 AM

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week to the lowest level in more than four and a half years, according to government data on Thursday that suggested improvement in the labor market.

[...] Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 30,000 to a seasonally adjusted 339,000, the Labor Department said.

Economists had been expecting first time claims to edge up to 370,000.

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Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

This means nothing compared to the fact that President Obama was not an asshole like Mitt Romney in the first debate. Or something.

Posted by Bub on October 11, 2012 at 7:24 AM

The numbers are inaccurate. One state didn't report:

http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/10/…

Posted by Ya Sure Ya Betcha on October 11, 2012 at 7:42 AM

Net job growth, climbing stock market, businesses more profitable than ever, less unemployment claims...

But damn this militant socialist Kenyan homosexual and his anti-business policies!

Posted by Theodore Gorath on October 11, 2012 at 7:49 AM

If only the They can get the crucial low-information swing voter to believe.

Posted by The Max on October 11, 2012 at 8:09 AM

At least the vast majority of those jobs are high salary position that allow workers to live a strong middle class lifestyle.

Posted by Cato the Younger Younger on October 11, 2012 at 8:24 AM

Goldy,
Interesting spin ("more bad news for Romney") considering this headline:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/us/pol…

Like you, I want better employment numbers. This is good news for all America. We just need far better numbers. The UR is 7.8%. And, like @5 alluded to, minorites and the working class (blue-collar) still are hurting very much.

Posted by lark on October 11, 2012 at 8:36 AM

How fucking transparent can the cheating get?

BLS: We'll drop numbers a month before the election that make Obama NOT seem like a hopeless incompetent, by forgetting to add in one large state and hope nobody notices...

Obama's a fuck up. Plain and simple. If you won't vote for Romney, vote for Stein or Johnson.

Posted by delbert on October 11, 2012 at 9:00 AM

The recovery itself is a conspiracy! All those companies, hiring just to make the president look good. Dastardly.

Posted by Aurora Erratic

on October 11, 2012 at 9:01 AM

@8 What fucking recovery? Nobody is hiring anybody right now. Quit drinking the kool-aid.

Posted by delbert on October 11, 2012 at 9:04 AM

Companies are not hiring large numbers of people to full-time positions. However, some positions are being added, and lots of part-time and full-time contracting jobs are being added, which usually happens in the early stages of an employment recovery. Employment tends to trail other measures (such as stocks), so all of this is consistent with a recovery.

The recovery is slow, and relatively late, and could be a hell of a lot better if we used good fiscal policy and took advantage of record-low interest rates to create jobs more quickly, but we do have a recovery. And we'll throw away what little recovery we do have if we fail to re-elect Obama.

Posted by Cascadian on October 11, 2012 at 10:25 AM

@7: Since it is so tranparent, why don't you offer us one shred of evidence for your assertion?

Also, if they planned on cheating the whole time, why did they release fairly anemic jobs numbers for the last few months?

And for your statement @9:

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS140000…

http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/histor…

Also, you may want to refrain from "Kool-Aid" references when spouting conspiracy theories. It makes you look even stupider.

Posted by Theodore Gorath on October 11, 2012 at 10:48 AM

So, now the birthers think every job report is a conspiracy too? You guys have been huffing too much paint.

Posted by Jizzlobber on October 11, 2012 at 10:49 AM

@9: Plenty of companies are hiring.

Posted by tiktok on October 11, 2012 at 10:58 AM

@7 and 9 - you just love making bold statements with nothing to back it up, don't you?

Posted by Hernandez

on October 11, 2012 at 11:17 AM

I am looking directly at the DOL report, and I can see that CA reported numbers, since it's called out as one of the states with an increase of more than 1000 claims. However, if you look at the states with increases of more than 1000 (there are three) and decreases of more than 1000 (there are five), the net change in claims for those big changers is -4812 claims. It seems unlikely that there would be so few states with a net change of more than 1000 if there really was a 30k drop. It would mean that the unreported state probably had a drop of 20k or more.

Here's a link to the DOL report. http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/u…

Posted by beef rallard on October 11, 2012 at 11:50 AM

@11, Unemployment rate isn't very meaningful. What you need is the ratio of employed people to total population: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS123000… , which shows we haven't began to recover from the 8 millions jobs lost in 2008-09. The economy is adding enough new non-living wage jobs to keep up with population growth but we also shouldn't forget that older and long term unemployed workers are still out of luck.

Posted by anon1256 on October 11, 2012 at 2:16 PM