Thursday, January 14, 2010

Good news!

Initial unemployment claims have begun to... fall?

Uhm, not exactly. 800K new unemployment claims were filed last week. You can say "new claims are declining!" only if you apply a seasonal "fudge factor" to them. That normally applies for the post-Christmas season because the Christmas workers get laid off during the first week of January. But retailers didn't hire a lot of Christmas workers this year, they simply ceased laying off as fast as previously. My suspicion is that the traditional "seasonal adjustment" that the BLS has always applied to the post-Christmas unemployment filings is no longer applicable.

- Badtux the Employment Penguin

Posted by BadTux at 1/14/2010 02:53:00 PM
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4 comments:

  1. BBC14/1/10 6:23 PM

    I love grafts, you can make them look anyway you like.

    Everything is still pretty much steaming along the way I expected it to, on a sinking boat.

    And I'm fine with that, saw it coming, got ready for it. I'm going camping tomorrow, the rest of you monkeys are in charge while I'm gone.

    *shudders*

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jolly Roger14/1/10 6:48 PM

    You can't spell "BLS" without "BS."

    ReplyDelete
  3. TampaDoug14/1/10 10:03 PM

    BT - Three of us separately picked you out as the source of a comment Barbara wad trying to place. We were all suspended awaiting moderation - none of us saw the comments pending - so the comments are quite unconnected.

    ReplyDelete
  4. TampaDoug14/1/10 10:04 PM

    Barbara at Mahablog, I meant to say

    ReplyDelete

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