Reply #40: Initial claims 457K. Continuing claims 4.34M (down from 4.382M)

[tclambert]

http://www.briefing.com/Investor/Public/Calendars/EconomicReleases/claims.htm

Key Factors

•The lack of a sustained downward trend leaves little hope for a substantial positive surprise in tomorrow's employment report.
•According to the DOL, the continuing claims level was not adversely impacted by poor seasonal adjustments. Unfortunately, that does not mean the drop in claims is the result of increased hiring. Instead, it is most likely due to an acceleration of claimants running out of jobless benefits.
•Separately, emergency benefit levels remain in a seesaw trend as claims increased by 198,579 for the week ending Oct. 16 after declining by 260,318 for the week ending Oct. 9.

Big Picture

•New claims have dropped below 500,000, but they are still well above the typical levels found during the last recession. As major companies finish their labor restructuring, many of the newly unemployed are coming from smaller businesses. This tends to cause more hardship on Main Street as many of these workers are unprepared for their job loss.
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The decrease in continuing claims "is most likely due to an acceleration of claimants running out of jobless benefits." Think the new majority in Congress will extend unemployment benefits? You know they think the unemployed are just lazy. And they won't want to reward laziness with any more benefits. They wouldn't want to run up the deficit helping lazy people. No, they want to run up the deficit giving tax breaks to the wealthy.