http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-jobless-claims-flat-in-first-week-of-may-2012-05-10
What really gets to me is the way a lot of the media tries to spin the weekly and monthly jobs data to find ANY little grain of positive information to fawn over. The number of weekly new jobless claims was essentially unchanged last week from the REPORTED number 2 weeks ago. (which, of course, was REVISED upward today) Yet, to read a lot of the headlines, you'd think the latest data was GOOD news. (it isn't)
If you were paying attention, you'd notice that the 367,000 new jobless benefit claims reported for last week was actually 2,000 GREATER then the ORIGINAL reported number 2 weeks ago (365,000). But, that wouldn't have looked so good, so let's just revise the 2 week old number HIGHER, and then it looks like we've dropped new claims instead of increasing them. Really? REALLY???
Remember when April unemployment came out, and there were actually MORE people on unemployment then in March, but the unemployment RATE dropped to 8.1 percent?? Come on, now... Even as a layman, I can see through THAT charade. The fact remains, if you counted EVERYONE who is of working age, who would LIKE to work but currently isn't working, the unemployment rate would be something north of 11 percent. And don't EVEN get me started about the number of people who are UNDERemployed.
That's a whole other story...
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