New Unemployment Claims; Three Bad Weeks of Failure to Continue Recovery

This is a follow up to the previous article, designed to be shorter and clearer. As usual, on Thursdays, the initial estimate of new unemplyment claims for the previous week was annunced todya, To make clear just how BAD this weeky number has been over the past 3 weeks, let us go back and summarie the past FOURE weeks (being both the initial and revised number for each week, beginning with the number for the most distant week):


353,000 (REVISED upweard from 351,000); 364,000 (RVISED upward a whopping 16,000 from the initially reported number of 348,000, turning a supposed--headline grabbing--FALL of 5,0,000 into a RISE 9f 11,000, but avoiding the HEADLINE about arise of 11,000).; 363,0000, REVISED upward from 359,00000, confirming that the previous 3564,000 was no fluke, as the number turned out to be essentially unhanged, after initially being reported as a "fall" 9f 5,000--lol---afrom that radically revised 364,000); and today's initially reported number 9f 357,000 (to be REVISED next week, and which SHOULD have been reorted as most likely the thrid straight week of 350,0000 and above, given the CONSIISATENTA upward revision of at least 3,000 in the initially reported number).


Thus, we have THREE STRAIGHT WEEKS of BAD weekly numbers, assuming this week's number of 357,000 is not revised downward (almost NEVER happens). Notice that we went from a 353,000 number to three straight weeks at 36,0000 and above. As stated in the previous article, this is at the TOP of the essentailly three month range between 350,000 and 365,0000. That means the number has essentially NOT improved all year. Oh. The previous week (before the fur weeks I list above)? The number for that week was 352,000, as the number had been basically between 350,000 and 355,000 for several weeks.


EVERY one of these weeks, the MEIDIA has initially reported (without ever an apology or correctiioin, other than to give the revised number) a FALL in new unempllyment claims. Thus, as far as media hedlines are concerned, new unemplyment claims have "fallen" EVERY WEEK , Proble: The heaines may have shown that new unemplyment claims FELL every weei, but the number has RISEN from around 350,000 to above 360,000 (perhaps for three straight weeks). Do you wonder that I call the media LIARS for the way they rreport this weekly number?


This means that the new unemplyment claims--a meure of lAYOFFS, where a larger number is BAD--are showing a FAILURE of any furthe "recovery" in the labor market, after the improvemetn at the end of last year and very beginning of this year. In a lot of ways, this is a repeat of what happened in 2010 and 2011, although we will have the wait and see whether this weekly DETERIORATES into the summer, as happened in both 2010 adn 2011. These last 3 weeks have shown a SMALL "detgerioration", but really more of a FAILURE TO IMPRROVE any further.


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