Replies

“I’m trying to understand thsi figure, especially the word —initial. This tells me that 460,000 were newly laid off. Am I right in my understanding ? If so, WHEN were they laid off ? the previous week ? “

Someone a few months ago said the normal in a robust economy is 300,000 or so. While we are still loosing ground, it is not as bad as that number initially seems.

Someone a few months ago said the normal in a robust economy is 300,000 or so.

This does not answer my question. What is 300,000 in a normal economy ? 300,000 newly created jobs or 300,000 newly laid off people?

OK, I got this from reading Wikipedia ( see topic : JOBLESS CLAIMS ) :

"Initial Jobless Claims is a report issued by the U.S. Department of Labor on a weekly basis. The employment situation is extremely important for a macroeconomic analysis, so the financial markets tracks employment indicators, although this is a low impact one compared with the monthly BOL's "Employment Report". This report tracks how many people have filed for unemployment benefits in the previous week".

This simply means that with the figure of 460,000 initial jobless claims, there were 460,000 who lost their jobs last week !!

This of course does not give us the total economic picture because I would like to know how many new jobs were added last week so that we can see the NET gain or loss in jobs.