The BLS reported this morning that new jobless claims declined to 601,000 in the last week. That is the lowest reading since January. The 4 week moving average also declined to 637,000. According to the research reported by Prof. James Hamilton, this decline means that it is more likely than not that the recession will ultimately be deemed to have ended by the end of June. Click on the link to look at his graph from last week. Undoubtedly he will update later.
The Economic Populist
Speak Your Mind 2 Cents at a Time
50%
I read 50%, chance of recovery starting in June.
Do you think we should include econbrowser in place of Winter in the middle column?
I see CR is reporting that we have continued record claims so to me if this is yet another "jobless recovery" (I read this as even more labor arbitrage, i.e. offshore outsourced jobs, bringing in more cheap labor, forcing people to work even more hours, etc.)
"recovery" is a relative word
After all, the initial recession for the Great Depression ended in 1933.
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Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
I would like to see stats of all the small 1099 people
and 1099 contract workers that are now unemployed. When things were cooking, many people tried their hand at working as their own boss. When construction was booming there were a lot of guys that became self employed subs contracting with the GC.
Now that things have turned sour those subs are out of business and without jobs available....where are they? Since they were 1099 people, they wouldn't be getting unemployment and don't show up on the radar. As with a lot of government shadow stats, just because the 1099 people don't show on their list doesn't mean they don't exist.
I personally know about 10 guys that during the construction boom they went subcontractor status. So if little old me know ten people, in my little patch of the Nation, if one would extrapolate the numbers across the entire Nation I would guess it is a big number.
Then there is that little nit picky stat of people that have run past their total unemployment benefit period but still have no job. I also know some of them.
Not terribly available
I almost did a blog posting on this (I'll be deleting the private one today) using TaxIDs as a proxy for the self-employed, but I was unable to get the "drop off" rates even from the SBA. NOBODY is tracking this on either end.
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Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
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Maximum jobs, not maximum profits.
I don't think
they want to know. Because if they knew, they could be twisted into telling what they know or knew.
This way if they never had the stats, with a straight face they can say..I don't know.