Total US jobless rolls drop sharply ...some good news!!

WASHINGTON – The total number of people on the unemployment insurance rolls dropped for the first time since early January, the government said Thursday, while new claims for benefits rose slightly.

The Labor Department said the total unemployment insurance rolls fell by 148,000 to 6.69 million in the week ending June 6, the largest drop in more than seven years. The decline is a sign that layoffs are easing.

The drop also breaks a string of 21 straight increases in continuing claims, the last 19 of which were records. A dip in continuing claims several weeks ago was later revised higher.

The doomers and gloomers will arrive shortly to pour cold water all over it.

And maybe throw in a dour article by Barbara Ehrenreich to boot.

:shrug:

I call being realistic. A quarter of the states have seen unemployment go above 10%. Most states had unemployment go up. Many of the auto industry job cuts have yet to occur...cuts that will effect almost every state. Companies are still cutting jobs. It seems like you want to take one piece of info and celebrate that the recession is coming to an end.

construction site to the next. I am glad to see it.

I still chill thinking about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis

Definitely good news; I hope the trend continues!!

see my post #9.

if anything, the opposite is true: new claims continue to rise.

which would be odd

Sorry charlie, but the number of people unemployed has in NO way declined, quite the contrary. When the number of NEW claims goes down, then you can make that claim. There are other indicators that show much promise, but this is not one of them.

The level of initial claims is the leading indicator.

That series has been falling since March.

their conclusion: that layoffs are easing.

the data: total number on the rolls falling, but new claims rising.

what the conclusion does not account for is that the number of people who've run out of their max allowable claims fall off the rolls automatically. And, if new claims have risen steadily, and continue to do so, then it actually indicates the opposite: that layoffs are still on the rise.
Even if people came off the rolls by securing new employment (which these figures have no way of determining), the amount of layoffs continues to increase.

this is a case of manipulation data to arrive at a desired conclusion.

(edited to change decrease to increase)

for those out of benefits.

as I stated, it actually indicates new jobless claims have never decreased, but have in fact increased.

maybe I'm not explaining it well.

Layoffs = newly jobless
jobless claims = continues to increase
their conclusion = layoffs decreasing.

their conclusion is faulty.

The week-to-week data are too volatile to identify trends. Economists look at the four week moving average.

This dropped from 623K to 616K.

Further, the series peaked in March at 659K.

http://www.briefing.com/Investor/Public/Calendars/EconomicReleases/claims.htm

in your OP.

what I said was apropos to the OP and ITS conclusions, not a new source of information

considering the extension, is that the number of people that have found new work has outstripped a slight increase in new claims. People are still getting layed off, but some are now starting to hire.

While new claims rose, it wasn't enough to influence the total number on the rolls, which actually declined. If the extension wasn't in play, you would have to assume that these people dropped off the end.

Maybe (some) people are finding jobs. Still not enough to make much of a dent, but enough to counter the new layoffs. If this is the case, we would see total employment rolls going up or at least staying about the same.

Likely some combination of new jobs, slower layoffs, and people falling off rolls. But admitting that it's some combination would take away our basis for arguing.

I'm legal counsel for my state's unemployment office. We went over these numbers just yesterday.

People are going back to work sooner than they were in January-March. They still have benefit weeks left on their claims but they are finding jobs. We are not sure exactly why that is since the number of new claims remains steady (at least not rising as they have been since Dec. 07). There is some evidence, far from conclusive, that employers who recently laid off employees are hiring them back.

Appeals of unemployment claims is down sharply (25%) which is also an indication people are going back to work more quickly.

I've been at the unemployment office through three recessions. We have been seeing stuff in this one we have never seen before. It will probably be some time before we really know what happened and why.

Thanks for the firsthand information! Do have any other examples of anomalies not seen in prior recessions?

We noticed the numbers were up in December 07 and it was a pretty steady increase to about June (I'm in the appeals office, we don't get the initial claim but the appeal, our numbers sky rocketed in August so I'm sort of guessing that for initial claims it was sometime in June or early July.) It went steadily up through February and there has been a steady drop the last 3 months.

They tell me that the numbers are still not at an all time high. It just feels breath taking because it was so quick. We've doubled our staff and tripled the number of incoming phone lines.

I'm the last level appeal in the agency. When I started in 1997 we had an average of 6.19 second level appeals per week. We've had 28-30 almost every week for the last couple of months. We're exhausted but grateful to have jobs. When you hear the stories we hear day in and day out, its hard to feel sorry for yourself because you haven't had a weekend off for months.

There is a giant economic time bomb about to go off.

I won't feel we are out of this until its diffused or it we can see the effect of it failing.

overnight if the Californian ship isn't righted.

They have used all their extensions and are now out of unemployment, that is why the rolls have dropped for the first time since early January.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/19/news/economy/State_unemployment_report/index.htm?postversion=2009061910

Jobless rate rises in nearly all states

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia recorded unemployment rate increases in May, the government reported Friday. One state registered a rate decrease, and one state had no rate change.

Several states and regions posted their highest unemployment rate since the report debuted in 1976.


this just shows that using unemployment rolls as an indicator for actual unemployment is a faulty criterion.

Your article is about May.

We don't know, and the data won't tell us for another three months or so. By September, we will truly know if the layoffs have stopped and/or that employment is increasing.

My hunch is that the various stimuli (both monetary and fiscal) are having the effect of keeping us out of total economic abyss.

The only correct analysis of the data at this point is that we're not declining at the same warp speed rate that we were before.