>>>I guess I don’t pay enough attention to the details. Can someone help me out? For a number of months (all of 2009), I’ve seen montly reports which (If I recall correctly) say that job losses for the previous month were around half a million. That’s been up and down, but consistently in that ballpark. Now this report is giving the bad news that job losses are are 169,000, and the previous month was 195,000. I’m thinking that this is a different type of number. Can anyone explain?
I think you may be referring to the weekly initial jobless claims numbers, which have been running around 500,000 of late. That is a gross number. The number here is a net number, so it shows the impact of layoffs, but also new hires. Because it includes new hires, this number is lower than the gross number. It is important to note that even when payrolls are increasing and unemployment declining, the weekly jobless claims are generally in the 300,000 - 400,000 range.
Thanks!