This week’s jobless claims came in higher than expected tending to confirm that the recovery is: 1) still very slow; and 2) jobless, despite attempts by the Obamunist-controlled press to paint a different picture.
Politico headlined that unemployment applications “decline slightly” this week.
The Associated Press via the Chicago Sun Times- an Obamunist press if there ever was one- also reported that unemployment applications “decline slightly.” Reuters too skewed its headline: “US jobless claims edge down last week,” as did the New York Times: “US Jobless Claims Dip.”
Depending on to whom you listened, the stock market was up early in trading on the unemployment report or was down midday on the unemployment report.
Earlier in the day, one market-related website reported at the open that the market was up on jobs data that showed unemployment continuing to trend up.
The Wall Street Journal, by contrast, reported that Wall Street was up despite poor data on unemployment, largely propelled by strong company earnings.
By the end of the session, when the market finished down, it was agreed that, at least by the standards of the stock markets, the economy is swooning, not swimming and the jobs data was bad.
“The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits was higher than expected,: reported Dow Jones, “a sign of lost momentum in the labor market, as 386,000 initial claims were filed in the week ended April 14, more than the 375,000 economists expected in a Dow Jones Newswires poll.”
Even more ominous is that the number for last week was revised upward from 380,000 initial claims to 388, 000 initial claims.
Our own Mike Shedlock pointed out earlier this week, Gallup’s employment data implies that unemployment will go up even using the phony math that the government economists use.
And it’s hardly good news when unemployment claims are going down week to-week because you are sharply revising previous claims upward.
As Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey notes:
Their economists had bet that last week’s results were an outlier, which wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. This, however, looks like an upward movement in job churn, not a good sign for overall employment. It’s interesting that we’re seeing that now rather than last month, where jobless reports ran in the mid-360Ks but job creation got stymied at only 120,000 for the month. If this indicator continues at the mid-380K level or starts rising above it, April’s jobs report may make March look positively cheery.
Political Calculations mentioned the job market potentially slowing few weeks ago. “The March 2012 jobs data would seem to confirm that the U.S. economy has indeed begun to decelerate after growing strongly, as we have been expecting. We would be seeing a very different picture for jobs in the U.S. if the economy were genuinely gaining steam across the board.”
Indeed, Political Calculations seemed to have predicted the breakdown in the jobs trends back at the beginning of March: “The new trend officially began on 3 December 2011 and has continued through at least 18 February 2012. We suspect our previous prediction that the trend will flatten out in the weeks ahead will come true, given that we're closing in on the typical level of new jobless claims recorded before the recession began in December 2007, as the U.S. economy peaked at that time.”
Indeed, I’ve been writing about a slow down in both hiring and GDP since before the first of the year.
It’s too bad that the public is still served poorly by so-called journalist who really operate as an extension of the Obama campaign press office.
You’d think even as a matter of self-preservation, journalists would eventually worry just a tad about their own credibility.
But Obamunism has the same problem that most isms share.
People picked it based on emotion and have spent their lives- and their credibility- trying to justifying it based on logic.
And emotion, in these cases, always wins out."Like" me on Facebook and you'll get sneak peaks of columns and, as an added bonus, I will never raise your taxes. Send me email and I just might mention you on Sunday.
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