Jobless claims stable

The Department of Labor reported that initial jobless claims fell this week by 7,000 to 440,000 total initial claims filed.  The four week moving average barely changed, falling 4,750 to 458,500.

Analysis: Obviously the economy, now basically recovered, has to start creating jobs.  While the above data are largely treading water, the fact is that all of the other fundamentals of the economy have stabilized and are improving.  This will lead to businesses hiring soon.  I would expect that the unemployment rate, stubbornly hovering around 10.0% for many, many months now, would begin to fall in the late third quarter.

I would prefer that the jobless claims figures were rapidly improving, but the fact is that the economy still has a feeling of being hung over after too much debt consumption.  The source of the economic headache is unemployment, but the pain is slowly stabilizing and should abate soon.

Importance grade: 4; you read that correctly, a four.  After being near the top of my list of statistics for a long time, I now feel that initial jobless claims data are declining rapidly in importance.  The unemployment rate remains a more important figure, but it’s my impression that the U.S. consumer has come to accept the current employment situation.  Adjustments made in family budgets and behaviors reflect a fairly consistent economic reality.  In other words, people dislike volatility and respond in extreme ways when they feel the economic and employment climate is volatile.  The stable run of unemployment and jobless claims is now factored into reality.

Jason