Unemployment claims drop below 400,000 (to 397,000 in the week ended Oct. 29)

The Hill ^ | 11/03/2011 | Vicki Needham

[Longbow1969]

The economy needs 200k per WEEK just to stay even. That 103k for the month is short by about 700k.

Huh? No, your are incorrect. It sounds like you are mixing up reports or something. The economy needs to add about 100,000ish jobs per month to account for population growth. That is approximately what we are getting which is why the unemployment rate has stuck at 9.1% for so long. If we actually added 800,000 per month it would signal a very rapid expansion and the unemployment rate would drop dramatically.

The weekly jobless claims is something entirely different. Even in a very good economy there are hundreds of thousands of new unemployment claims each week. If the number of new weekly jobless claims is over 400,000 it generally signals a very sluggish job market. Anything under 400,000 generally signals some job growth. If we start seeing numbers around 350,000 or under it means we are seeing more significant job growth.

[NC28203]

>>>Stuart Varney said on FoxNews about a year ago that the economy would need to be creating 200k jobs per week just to stay even. At 400k new jobless per WEEK, that is 1.6 million new unemployed per month. 100k new jobs per MONTH isn’t going to make a dent in that.

I'm guessing that Mr. Varney said 200K per month, not week. As I noted in my prior post, even at the peak of jobs growth in 2005 and 2006, we would have been well below the level you posit as necessary to stay even.

On the second item, you are comparing apples and oranges. The weekly claims only report job losses. The monthly number is payroll job increases, net of job losses.

[Longbow1969]

Stuart Varney said on FoxNews about a year ago that the economy would need to be creating 200k jobs per week just to stay even.

At 400k new jobless per WEEK, that is 1.6 million new unemployed per month. 100k new jobs per MONTH isn’t going to make a dent in that.

You are mixing up reports, apparently misunderstood Varney and are otherwise entirely incorrect. You should stop posting on this subject till you know what you are talking about.

[NC28203]

>>>Check the posting history of the bot you’re responding to and you’ll understand exactly what you’re dealing with.

So you agree with TomGuy that at the height of the Bush expansion we were 600,000 jobs short on a monthly basis?

[NC28203]

>>>Stuart Varney said on FoxNews about a year ago that the economy would need to be creating 200k jobs per week just to stay even.

"Though estimates vary, many experts say that the economy needs to add roughly 125,000 jobs per month to keep pace with population growth, and 200,000 jobs per month to bring down the 9.1 percent unemployment rate."

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/11/02/adp-challenger-data-suggest-middling-jobs-number-for-friday

[Longbow1969]

TomGuy does not know what he is talking about.

Literally every week people post ignorantly about these reports because they’ve never bothered to find out what what they actually mean, how they are different and what represents good versus bad numbers. It is really quite tiresome.