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Jobless Claims Fall Again

Overall, the number of new people filing for unemployment has dropped a considerable amount in the last 5 months. In June a total of 600,000 claims were reported. Economists are looking for a sustained decline in initial claims for unemployment below 450,000. If this occurs, things would look a lot brighter for the US job market.

This is the 4th time in the last 5 weeks that there has been a decline. Economists who were polled earlier this week expected a rise in unemployment claims, however they were pleasantly surprised when the opposite was reported this morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 40 points in pre-market trading this morning, as hope for a slow recovery continue to be on the minds of traders.

Massachusetts Department of Workforce

The delays began on Sunday, and have extended into today, as the page is loading at a very slow rate. Some members are complaining that they can not log in at all.

The official notice on the website at www.mass.gov/dua/webcert states:
“Due to heavy volume during the day on Sunday (the first day for signing weekly benefits), UI claimants may experience difficulty or delay with WebCert service. We encourage claimants to sign during the expanded hours of 7:00pm to 10:00pm on Sunday or use TeleCert (call 617-626-6338) during the expanded hours. Certifying weekly benefits early in the day provides no advantage. All payments are sent at the same time on the next business day.”

The telephone service appears to be working fine, so that is an option if you can not get the page to load, or don’t have the time to wait for delays at Mass.gov.

The stock market is up in pre-trading this morning, as the Commerce Department released the latest data for private sector jobs. The numbers were a blowout of expectations, as the US added 67,000 private sector jobs in August. Analysts expected an increase of only 30,000 jobs.

In addition to an increase in jobs last month the average hourly earnings per worker climbed 3 cents to $19.08, however the average work week remained unchanged from the month before at 34.2 hours.

The stock market has been looking for any glimmer of hope that it can come by, that the US is not headed towards a double dip recession. These job numbers, along with numbers earlier this week indicating that home prices rose last month, certainly are helping things. The Dow is up about 250 points from where it closed last week.

Unemployment Improving?

48 expert economists who were surveyed by the Dow Jones Newswires predicted that jobless claims would only fall by about 10,000 (median of those surveyed). Instead we saw a decline of 31,000 which is three times what was expected.

The statistic refers to the applications for unemployment benefits in the U.S. It does not include those people who were already collecting unemployment. These numbers are slightly encouraging for a job market that has not had much good news lately. After last weeks news that 504,000 people had filed for unemployment the week before, a lot of analysis were not expecting much improvement. The 504,000 new claims was the highest we’ve seen since November.

There doesn’t seem to be any special underlying cause for the larger than expected drop, according to the Labor Department. It will be interesting to see what happens this week and the coming few weeks. Perhaps the job market is getting better after all.

Unemployment still not improving

Last week, there were 500,000 new claims filed for unemployment. This number is higher than it has been in 9 months. Last week, there were 480,000 claims filed. Unemployment insurance is issued to those who are actively looking for new jobs, after being layed off of their previous jobs.

Many job seekers are wondering when the job market will get better. Economists are mixed on their predictions. Some believe it is about to turn around now, while others believe that we have over a year to go before things change. Employment numbers are considered to be a lagging indicator, meaning they tend to get better after the economy has begun to recover. Job numbers usually are not analyzed to see which direction the economy is turning.

Last week we saw a mixed bag of economic data reported.  Although private section jobs increased more than expected, overall unemployment numbers actually increased more than most economists had predicted.  This coming week, although not as eventful as last week, will produce some very important data which could be responsible for moving the markets in one direction or the other in a big way.

On Tuesday the 10th we will get the Wholesale Inventory numbers which the market experts predict will have risen 0.4% over June. On Wednesday, the Trade Balance numbers will be interesting to look at. These are expected to show a rise in exports over imports of about $500 million in June.  On Thursday, the much anticipated, weekly initial claims of unemployment number will be released, and on Friday we will get the CPI numbers as well as US Retail Sales numbers.

Even though most of the larger corporations have reported earnings for the 2nd quarter already, there are still hundreds that have yet to report.  This coming week will feature dozens of companies reporting their earnings including Dish Network, Echostar, Tyson Foods, Steak n’ Shake, and Wellcare Health Plans.  It will be interesting to see if the markets can continue holding strong, or if we are in for some kind of pullback.

Last week Timothy Geithner expressed his view to the nation on ABC’s Good Morning America that we may actually see an increase in unemployment over the short term, before it eventually decreases.  Although the Unemployment rate has remained unchanged at 9.5% for the month of July, the July numbers have indicated that more people were unemployed in July than they were in June.

Although the private section hired 71,000 additional employees last month, the Public sector, the Federal Government, laid off 143,00 employees. These were mostly Census Bureau workers who were hired months ago to help with the 2010 US Census. Economists say that if it wasn’t for the fact that many people have given up looking for work, thus dropping out of the workforce here in America, the unemployment rate would likely be over the high we saw of 9.7% back in May.

The one piece of good news that came from the statistics released this morning is that the average length of the work week has increased a smudge to 34.2 hours.  In total though, there are over 14.6 million people unemployed, and almost 50% of them have been without a job for greater than 6 months.

Every month at this time we have the prior months ADP Job numbers released.  Today, we saw the numbers for July, and they were slightly better than most economists had predicted.  In July the country saw an increase in private sector jobs of approximately 42,000.  Economists on average had expected an increase of 39,000 jobs.  In addition to the job numbers for July being higher than expected, the numbers for June have also been revised upward to an increase of 19,000. It was originally reported that jobs only increased by 13,000 in June.

Most of the gains came from small and medium sized businesses, with larger corporation job creation remaining relatively flat.  Although a majority of corporations are reporting better than expected earnings, they don’t seem to be hiring as fast as the smaller business’s out there are.

Despite these better than expected numbers, the unemployment rate for the month of July is expected to rise to 9.6% from 9.5% in June because of the government jobs that have been lost from census bureau employees.  Having said this, the ADP numbers released today certainly give a still struggling economy hope that things are improving, even though at a slow pace.

The total amount of U.S. workers that filed new unemployment claims fell last week, but not by very much. Initial claims for unemployment benefits fell by 11,000 to 457,000 in the week ended July 24. This comes a week after the total had risen.

Most forecasters predicted that the jobless claims would decline this week, but not quite as much as they did. Even though the number of initial claims declined, the total number of individuals who are claiming benefits continued to rise. With the increase in unemployment, comes the decrease in consumer spending which directly effects the economy as a whole. The recovery is coming along, but at a very slow pace. Some economists believe that the recovery will come to a standstill sometime during the second half of 2010.

With initial claims for unemployment decreasing more than forecasters had expected this week, stock futures saw a slight surge before the market opened.