Unemployment Filings Reached 573,000 Last Week
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Business, Economy, Money
That’s right. That’s one week’s total.
You can expect the unemployment numbers, which is a trailing indicator anyway, to start really as more and more companies find that access to funds is limited and so they begin to batten down the hatches so they don’t go completely out of business.
More layoffs were announced Thursday. New Britain, Conn.-based tool maker Stanley Works said it plans to cut 2,000 jobs and close three manufacturing facilities, while Sara Lee Corp., known for food brands such as Jimmy Dean and Hillshire Farm, said it will cut 700 jobs as the Downers Grove, Ill.-based company outsources parts of its business. [...]The jump in initial jobless claims is partly due to a rebound in claims from the previous week, which included the Thanksgiving holiday, a Labor Department analyst said. Government offices were open for fewer days that week.
Still, the four-week average, which smooths out fluctuations, was a seasonally-adjusted 540,500, the highest since December 1982, when the economy was emerging from a steep recession.
And those are just the new folks who filed for unemployment. Those already drawing money are still at record highs…
The number of people continuing to claim jobless benefits also jumped much more than expected, increasing by 338,000 to 4.4 million, the Labor Department said. Economists expected a small increase to 4.1 million. The figure for continuing claims lags initial claims by one week.As a proportion of the work force, the number of people continuing to receive benefits is the highest since August 1992, when the U.S. was recovering from a relatively mild recession. The increase in continuing claims was the largest jump since November 1974, the department said.
Couple that with the news that Obama’s administration is extremely worried that things will get much worse before they get better and you have the makings of a perfect economic storm that only massive government spending can solve.
This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 and is filed under Business, Economy, Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:48 am
It is somewhat ironic that massive government spending is needed to get us out of this mess, when that is what has been occuring for 8 years. What is even more ironic is that the people who have been spending that money for the last 8 years are the ones who have found religion in fiscal conservatism all of the sudden.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:48 am
It’s really awful, isn’t it? My heart goes out to all these people losing their jobs and facing grim prospects. I’ve been thinking about making regular decent-sized donations to our local food bank because I’m OK for now, and there but for the grace…, right?
So I’m going to go ahead and promise that I’ll follow up on this, to put some pressure on myself to actually do it.
And now, a math note. Reporting these stories is going to keep terrifying folks. And hey, being terrified might be pretty close to the right response. Yet I can’t help but notice that the reports often don’t give us much context, so they are just numbers piling up in our heads: 2000 here, 15 thousand there, and so on.
So if any journalists out there are tuning in, how about including some data on the percent of the company’s work force that is being laid off? Is 2000 tool works people a quarter of the work force, or half, or a tenth, or what? Are we talking about trims or slashes?
As someone who still has a job but who is worried because who knows how far it might all go, it would be nice to have some sense of the scope of any given job cut in relation to the size of the company.
December 12th, 2008 at 9:00 am
[...] hate to be so gloom and doom about our current economic health, but the numbers are the numbers and I feel the need to talk [...]