US unemployment aid applications rise to 386K

AP via Yahoo news ^ | June 14, 2012 | Christopher S. Rugaber

[John W]

WASHINGTON (AP) — More Americans sought unemployment aid last week, suggesting hiring remains sluggish.

The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly unemployment benefit applications rose 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 386,000, an increase from an upwardly revised 380,000 the previous week.

The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose for the third straight week to 382,000. That's the highest in six weeks.

Weekly applications are a measure of the pace of layoffs. When they drop below 375,000, it typically suggests hiring is strong enough to reduce the unemployment rate.

[concerned about politics]

Last week’s figures were “upwardly revised” this week? What a surprise — just how many times has that happened in the past four years?

It's never been revised down. It always gets revised up later.
They're spinning the numbers as hard as they can right now to avoid a panic - or hurt Obomas chances of reelection, of course.

[Uncle Miltie]

Is this our second or third “Summer of Recovery”?

I’m so confused.

[Uncle Miltie]

What are the chances that they haven’t been cooking the books every week?

Well, if the odds of being over or under are 50% in each instance, the odds they aren’t cooking the books are:

0.000000000000000002710%

Which means the odds that the books are cooked are:

99.9999999999999999997390%

[cherokee1]

None of these “new claim” numbers mean anything except to the guys doing the filing. There are always, even in the best of times, people changing jobs, and companies closing down. They must always be compared to the number of new jobs being filled. Our population requires about 120K NEW jobs/ month just to keep up with population growth. It’s been some years tho since we were at even that level. New filings can go all the way down to 100K / month in the current market and we will STILL BE losing ground-——so all the bullwhackey about how good things would be if the new filings would just drop below 400K-—376K-—350K-—275K——200K ( following me? ) are just meaningless BS. Until new filings are less than new hirings we will be circling the terlet bowl. Every other form of “analysis “is vaporized upchuck.-—————————————————I have to go rest now.

[SeekAndFind]

More proof that the private sector is doing fine.

MAYBE HE OUGHT TO TRY THE PUBLIC SECTOR...

[kearnyirish2]

“The numbers are WAY worse than what they are reporting.”

That is why I’m really starting to believe Obama will lose. Regardless of what the idiot box spouts each night, too many people are either out of work or have family members out of work. They know the true situation on the ground, and will vote accordingly. Lying to their faces just adds insult to injury...

[Gaffer]

Wait wait wait.....we see the unemployment claim numbers...where in the hell are the “new jobs created” numbers the BLS (Obama) always has? They used to say “private sector created 100,000 jobs...blah blah blah...”