Jobless claims improved again
Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Jul 16, 2009 in Blog | 2 commentsToday jobless claims fell for the second straight week. This week’s fall was 47,000. Not only that but the number of continuing claims fell by 642,000 to 6.3 million. Continuing claims are people who have filed for unemployment for more than one week.
Analysts have been reluctant to hail this information as good news. The reason is that there are some estimates of layoffs in the data. Specifically auto-industry layoffs have not materialized as anticipated. Because this is only two weeks of data, analysts are cautioning that we need at least two more weeks to get a clear snapshot of what is happening in the labor market for real.
Nonetheless, earlier this week retail sales were up, but analysts chose to remove the improvement of auto sales from the number. That made a positive uptick in retail sales look slightly negative. Interesting then that for jobless data analysts do not want to remove the effects of the auto industry. Hmmm.
Obviously jobless data are keeping most people in a spending lockdown. When the labor market improves then people’s wallets will open more widely. And the recovery will be well underway.
Jason
I agree it's interesting that "analysts" are selectively including auto industry numbers, but I think they are doing it in the correct way, at least. Their conservatism does prevent some upbeat feelings on the part of businesses & consumers, sure, but they are Cing their A's. In the same way , when I've run budgets in the past, I round my expenses up and my revenue down to eliminate any unpleasant surprises. Seems to me that if we can prolong our recovery, we'll be in a better long-term position. No need for people to get all giddy and forget this ever happened, resulting in a bubble; we need to actually have, as you say, REAL economic progress.
Yup, I agree with you Nate. Looked at from the point of view of conservativism it is acceptable practice. The inclusion/exclusion of the auto-industry data is inconsistent and a little maddening because it makes it harder for the average Joe or Jane to understand.
Your comments are always much appreciated!