It has been a when since the number of new jobless claims dropped. For the last year, employment within the U.S. has been awful. Nevertheless, the usual holiday employment bump and an additional bump from the U.S. census hiring individuals made things a little better. Good news is better than bad news. Housing, the other area that is bad off, is nevertheless within the basement. The news is more a Pyrrhic victory than anything else. Unemployment has held steadily since November of last year. On the plus side, it did cheer up stock markets. There was a slight boost on Wall Street as a result.
New unemployed cases decrease slightly
A drop was recorded in the quantity of new claims for unemployment benefits by the Department of Labor. Seasonally adjusted, there were 473,000 jobless cases. Nevertheless, that number is down by 31,000 over the last week. The past four weeks, according to Forbes, average out to unemployed cases of 486,750, which are the highest since November 2009. One must take lower winter unemployment with a grain of salt, though. Winter provides some seasonal employment for retail. There was also some temporary other employment. The Census was taken this year.
Stock exchange offered a boost
According to the Wall Street Journal, the news did some urgent good. It gave stock exchanges a very modest increase. The boost wasn’t much to boast of though. The biggest gain was .3 percent for Standard and Poor’s. Nasdaq climbed a staggering .2 percent. The Dow Jones needs to put Prozac in the drinking fountains, as the Dow only climbed .1 percent. However, the big news is less the fall in unemployment claims, but the activity concerning 3Par and Dell, as Dell has acquired the data storage company. There’s a big bidding war going on, and it’s even bigger news than the Potash saga. Hewlett Packard and Dell are fighting it out for 3Par, and it is causing a huge firestorm of coverage.
The advance is actually slight
This is not really an indicator of much within the way of unemployment radically decreasing. Fewer employers are at the moment hiring. The real estate market has been nothing short of dismal, and it is estimated that 10 percent of all homeowners are at risk of foreclosure.
Forbes
forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/08/26/real-estate-industrials-us-economy_7879865.html
Wall Street Journal
online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100826-709681.html
