The Only Thing Rising In This Economy…
…Unemployment. It soared again last week with 531,000 first time claims for unemployment insurance.
The number of first-time filers for unemployment insurance rose last week, snapping two weeks of significant declines, according to a government report issued Thursday.
There were 531,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended Oct. 17, up 11,000 from an upwardly revised 520,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said in a weekly report. The week included the Columbus Day holiday.
A consensus estimate of economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected 515,000 new claims.
I happened to hear an NPR report on this today. They made happy noises because the total number drawing unemployment dropped. Apparently, they think the job fairy visited all those people who had been on the rolls – rather than the rather more likely scenario that those people fell off the rolls and into an abyss. CNN has a sidebar story about four people that lost their jobs and had run out of benefits in July. Three of them do not have full time employment to this day.
Instead of trying to help the economy, Obama and the Democrats are full steam ahead on more spending.
How’s that Hope and Change working for you?
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By MAS, October 23, 2009 @ 9:11 am
As one of the currently unemployed, I was interested to learn that unemployment was still under 10%. A point of context here… if we were still measuring unemployment using the same methodology as under Jimmy Carter, we’d be looking at something closer to the 15% to 17% range. The latter figure includes those among us that have simply given up or are working only part time.
Until Obama cuts the annual budget and deficit, there will be no jobs recovery. At least that means there will be enough votes to get rid of the Democrats starting in 2010.