Thursday, October 28, 2010

More Useless Drivel from the MSM

as reported by the AP.

Unemployment claims drop sharply to 434K

The labor department claiming 21K fewer people applying for  jobless benefits does not take into account the number of people who are no longer eligible for unemployment,  nor the number of seasonal workers that may have been hired for the upcoming holidays.

Where I come from they call that cooking the books...

Do they really think we're that stupid?  Silly question!

 

3 comments:

Reaganite Independent said...

Just keeps coming

Sickening

Randy-g said...

Useless drivel from the MSM, uh that covers a pretty wide swath.......Oh wait, you did say more,heh.

Anonymous said...

This figure is released every week, and has been for as long as I can remember. It's not a measure of unemployment, so it naturally wouldn't include the number of people no longer eligible for unemployment. Nor would it include the number of people hired for seasonal work. It is simply the number of first-time applications for unemployment.

In essence, it is a measure of how many businesses are currently laying off employees. This number drives future unemployment. As the number drops, it will indicate that unemployment in the future will drop (typically 6-9 months).

The number is never 0, or anywhere close to that (almost never below 200,000), because even in the best of economies, some companies do shrink their workforce. A weekly first-time unemployment claim number under 300,000 has historically meant an expanding economy. When the 4-week moving average drops below 300,000, then that's a very good sign that the employment picture will be improving. Today's number, while better than recent weeks, still stinks.

BUT...no one is cooking the books. This figure is not well-understood, and people confuse it with the monthly unemployment numbers (U-3 and U-6). Do a Google search of "initial jobless claims historical data", you can get the BLS figures for any time period you want.