It turns out that jobless claims are on the rise, and now sit at the worst levels since September. Keep in mind that when the Department of Labor says that, seasonally adjusted, 8000 more people made a first time claim for unemployment insurance, they really mean an increase of 147,256. That link only contains the most recent information, and thus will be gone next week! Remember, these numbers do not include temps, part-timers, and contractors because they are not eligible to receive unemployment benefits. The point remains that there was a larger increase in the state of Wisconsin alone (+10880) than the official seasonally adjusted headline number. If you prefer to think of it this way, the increase in people claimed unemployment for the first time last week exceeded the number of jobs created in all of November.*
Where else on earth does 8 equal 147?
In other bad news for the American economy, productivity growth is down and over 100,000 layoffs were announced in both October and November. Remember, that’s only announced layoffs at companies big enough to bother with press releases about such things. John Challenger, the guy whose job is to be an expert on layoffs and their effect on everything else says “The biggest worry for the economy is that the large number of lower-middle class and middle-class Americans struggling to make it paycheck to paycheck will be short of discretionary income during the holiday shopping season.” Plain and simple, many people will not have money for Christmas presents.
Meanwhile, we have a President who thinks that making sure 4th graders can read will help their parents get jobs.
Finally, I leave you with the most balanced item on currency problems that I have seen to date.
* This is a net jobs created figure, so lay-offs are already taken into account.