Jobless claims are at an all time high. Nevertheless, the number of new jobless claims got a small reprieve most recently. For the last year, employment in the U.S. has been awful. However, the usual holiday employment increase and an additional bump from the United States census hiring people made things just a little better. The housing market is nevertheless within the basement; nevertheless some good news about employment is a welcome change. The unemployment rate is virtually unchanged since November 2009, so this happy news is an empty victory if anything. The news made Wall Street happy, as markets climbed ever so slightly when the news broke.
Brand new jobless cases decrease slightly
The Department of Labor got to release some happy news. There was a reduction within the quantity of new unemployed cases this week. The number of jobless cases dropped 31,000 to a seasonally adjusted 473,000 since last week. That’s encouraging, but the past four weeks average to 486,750. According to Forbes, that’s the highest since November 2009. One must take lower winter unemployment with a grain of salt, though. Winter provides some seasonal employment for retail. The United States of America Census also employed a fair amount of people seasonally.
Unemployed cases spur stock exchange increase
The news of lower jobless claims led to an uptick in the stock exchange, as outlined by the Wall Street Journal. The uptick was modest at best; the greatest gain was a .3 percent boost for Standard and Poor’s. The Dow went up an unbelievable .1 percent, and Nasdaq shot up .2 percent. However, the big news is less the fall in unemployment claims, but the activity concerning 3Par and Dell, as Dell has acquired the data storage business. There’s a large bidding war going on, and it is even bigger news than the Potash saga. Hewlett Packard and Dell are fighting it out for 3Par, and it is causing a huge firestorm of coverage.
The improvement is small
This is not really an indicator of much in the way of unemployment radically decreasing. Fewer employers are currently hiring. Real estate shows few signs of life, and it is believed that up to 10 percent of all homeowners may have foreclosure as a significant possibility in their future.
Further reading
Forbes
forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/08/26/real-estate-industrials-us-economy_7879865.html
Wall Street Journal
online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100826-709681.html
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