Initial Jobless Claims creeping back up again
Initial Jobless Claims totaled 480k, 25k above expectations and up from 472k last week. It is now the 3rd week in a row above 470k and somewhat reverses the positive trend seen in the prior 4 weeks where all were below 455k. The 4 week average is now at 469k up from 457k last week and is at an 8 week high. Also, Continuing Claims rose by 2k and Extended Claims, past the initial 26 weeks, rose by a net 242k. Thus, ahead of tomorrow’s Payroll figure, the claims data has lost a bit of its recent momentum and reflects a private sector that still remains very reluctant to add workers. Q4 Productivity rose a solid 6.2% coincident with the sharp GDP gain but was .3% less than expected. Output rose by 7.2% but employee hours rose by only 1% as companies continue to do more with less. Unit Labor Costs, as a result of the productivity gain, fell by 4.4%.
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February 4th, 2010 at 10:47 am
Obama hasn’t gotten any credit for his very conservative approach to job creation: tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. It also hasn’t worked as well as they hoped–no politician worth his salt would put his name on a job creation program that only maintained high unemployment.
What explains this? If Obama isn’t getting credit for his conservative approach, and it isn’t working, why does he stick to it? In fact, yesterday Obama told the Senate Democrats that “we can’t go back to the New Deal program in the 21st century.”
Simple. Obama believes in it. He *is* a conservative.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:19 am
Just wait and see what happens tomorrow once the birth/death numbers are released for small businesses.