Here's a quick take the Labor Department's weekly initial jobs claims report:
- Labor Department News Release: click here.
- Key Numbers: "The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 405,639 in the week ending Oct. 23, an increase of 11,678 from the previous week. There were 494,476 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009." and "the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 434,000".
- My Spreadsheet (click Download 20101028yoy).
Here's my uneducated interpretation - A good data point, but not good enough to change anything. As you can see, the initial jobless claims situation is no longer improving over last year. Yuck. This looks like continued high unemployment to me.
Let me know what you think.