Treading water – jobless claims

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 11, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments This morning weekly initial jobless claims fell by 6,000.  A gaggle of economists had expected a drop of 9,000. Analysis:  Another week, another weak jobless number.  The economy just is not adding jobs at this point and the only reason that the unemployment rate seems to be falling is because the number of people who have given up looking for work has increased.  Additionally, these data are...
read more

The CEO of GE passes on his 2009 bonus

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 6, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, passed on taking a cash bonus in 2009.  This marks the second straight year in which he has skipped his cash bonus.  Needless to say, I consider Immelt’s choice to be appropriate corporate behavior.  His total compensation increased 6.5% while the price of the stock was down 1.8% from December 31, 2008 to December 31, 2009.  While there is a...
read more

Official unemployment rate number

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 6, 2010 in Blog | 1 comment I hope that wherever you are that Spring is beginning to spring.  Here in Santa Fe, we can finally see the ground completely for the first time since November.  Whew!  It has been a long winter, even longer for American workers… Yesterday the Department of Labor released its official unemployment figures.  The economy shed 36,000 in February, yet the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7%....
read more

Number of unemployed drops

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 4, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments The Department of Labor reported that initial jobless claims fell last week by 29,000 to 469,000.  Meanwhile, the four-week moving average which is designed to smooth the volatility in the data, fell 3,500 to 470,750. Analysis: I am neutral about this information.  While an improvement in initial jobless claims of 29,000 is nice to see, the fact is that many job-seekers have stopped looking for...
read more

Retail sales up for February

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 4, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments Thomson-Reuters (a newswire agency) reported today that its gauge of retail sales in the month of February was up 4.0% vs. 2.9%.  Retail sales have now been up 6 months in a row after 12 consecutive down months. Analysis: While 4.0% up is encouraging I have to point out that the 4.0% up is compared to last year’s February sales, which were dismal.  So the advance in the Thomson-Reuters...
read more

Jobs data from ADP

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Mar 3, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments The gigantic payroll firm Automatic Data Processing (ADP) reported jobs data this morning.  Namely, that there were 20,000 private sector jobs lost in February.  Economists had been expecting a loss of 50,000. Analysis: The financial markets are likely to hail this as a win, since expected losses were so much higher.  However, the economy is still losing jobs, despite the fact that GDP is...
read more

Sales of existing homes tumble

Posted by Jason Apollo Voss on Feb 27, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments Yesterday the National Association of Realtors released its January data regarding sales of existing home sales.  That is, the sale of used homes.  The number was down 7.2% from December.  This, despite the fact that U.S. government home buying incentives remain in place. Analysis: Again, this is not a good statistic and is a sign that consumers are not willing to spend additional monies, even...
read more