Obama Jobs Failure Continues: 420,000 Plus Jobs Lost Per Week

The report on new unemployment claims filed last week (people who have lost their job due to layoffs) came out this Thursday morning. First let me again embarrass the media (eas as that is) by again informing you how this blog exposed last week's usual LIE. As usual, this blog have youtoday's "news" LAST WEEK. Last week's reported nuimber for new unemployment claims was 428,000, subject t the usual revision (a caveat NEVER reported by the LIARS of the media). This blog told you last week that the revised number, based on consistent history, would be 431,000 or 432,000. Well, the REVISED number ws released this morning, and it was 432,000. Score another one for this blog.


The number reported this week, to be REVISED next week, is 423,000 . That makes 3 straight weeks that thee number has been above 420,000--a TERRIBLE number. In fact, the four-wek average is above 420,000, and that is disaster. As usual, you got the media LIE that the 423,000 number was a drop of 9,000. Even the media could not "spin" this to be actual "good" news, as clueless economists had predictably predicted a much larger "bounce back" from therecent rise. But readers of this blog know by nowe tat the 9,000 figure is a LIE--comparing apples and oranges (comparing today's unrevised number with today's revised number reported last week). On an apples-to-apples basis (comaping last week's initially reported number with this week's initially reported number), the number of claims "fell" 5,000--a number well witin the margin of error and not "good" news at all (other than at least the number did not keep going up). As stated, the number now appears to be stuck above the 420,000 level, and that is truly BAD news. Oh--again if the multi-year pattern continues, as it has for about 9 out of every 10 weeks--the 423,000 reported for this week will be REVISED to 436,000 or 427,000 next week.


The weekly number of new unemployment claims has now been above 400,000 for many MONTHS. No, since I am not a stupid member of the mainstream media, I correctly do not "count" the one week of 399,000 6 or 7 eeks ago as being "under" 400,000. That number was the sAME as 400,000--NO satistical difference. However, it is true that the weekly number had dropped to right at 400,000 for basically an entire month. Nowe that four-week average is back above 420,000. Not only is lthat BAD news in itself, but it is close to making it IMPOOSSIBLE for the September jobs report to be positive. You will have the media, and even economists, acting like we have to wait for the numbers at the end of September for how the "job market" did in September. That is simply not true. If the number of new unemployment calaims stays high, then it is IMPOSSIBLE for the economy to have "created" any significant number of new jobs, and IMPOSSIBLE for the unemployment rate to have gone down. It is hard to see how the weekly jobless claims number can improve enough during the rest of September to make it possible to have good MONTHLY numbers for September job creation and unemplyment. What if the monthy numbers are better than the weekly unemployment claim numbers would indicate? That just tells you that some or all of the nubeers are WRONG. These ae not numbers which are independent of one another, although they technically measure different things by different methods. You cannot haave significant job growth with a consistently bad weekly number on new unemployment claims.


What is most importatn about these numbers is how they look OVER TIME. At the ned of last year, this number went under 400,000. and in February we actaully had four-week averages under 400,000. Now we are again back to numbers about where we were last November. In other words, we have NOT IMPROVED for all of 2011, and we are fast approaching one year of NO IMPROVEMENT. This is actually consistent with NO IMPROVEMENT in the unemployment rate, and with the almost zero growth shown by GDP figures. It is semi-consistent with the monthly "job growth" numbers--only semi-consistent because those monthly job growth numbers have shown a few months of suspiciously strong job "growth". However, the AVERAGE has been very anemic, and not sufficient to drop the unemplyoment rate or immprove the job market. As you should know by now, the figures showed NO "job growth" for August, and it is hard to see how September can be any better if these weekly numbers do not show a sudden, dramatic improvement. The Fed just announced (Bernanke--Wort Failure in the History of World Finance) that there is a "significant dowside risk" to the economy. That hardly sounds like we ae gong to get a dramatic improvement, although Bernanke has been consistently WRONG--leading me to question myself when I find myself agreeing with him.


P.S. No proofreading or spell checking (bad eyesight).