Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Rise To 428,000 As Labor Market Stalls

WASHINGTON - The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits rose unexpectedly last week in a sign concerns about a weak economy were sapping an already beleaguered labor market, data showed on Thursday.

Applications for unemployment benefits climbed to 428,000 in the week ending September10 from an upwardly revised 417,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said.

It was the second straight week in which claims rose. Wall Street analysts had been looking for a dip to 410,000.

Excluding one week in early August, claims have held above 400,000 since early April. A Labor Department official said there was no discernible effect from Hurricane Irene or other storms in the national reading.

The four-week moving average of claims, which smooths out volatility, rose to 419,500 from 415,500 the prior week.

Continuing claims eased to 3.726 million in the week ending September 3 from 3.738 million the previous week. The number of total recipients on benefit rolls was 7.144 million.

U.S. employment growth ground to a halt in August, with zero net job creation raising fears of a new recession and putting pressure on the Federal Reserve to ease monetary policy further at its meeting later this month.

(Reporting by Jason Lange, Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[xlmb]

12:01 AM on 09/18/2011

To HP: Why is it that I am no longer getting mails to respond that I have to search for OR mails from those whom I follow. You go Garylinn and EvanRogers!!!!! Well said. They are full of chite!!!

[Hermadite]

02:10 PM on 09/16/2011

Unemployment in America

© 2011 Alan Abel



Why not establish a 24-hour television channel that highlights available jobs throughout America? All kinds in fifty states. Including working for the government. And Uncle Sam pays for relocating while the employer arranges affordable housing.
Certainly this plan would create a national migration.
But if you’re married with two kids, lost your job and health insurance, no unemployment insurance or savings, your only alternative is bankruptcy, and a homeless shelter. So why not move to another city and get a new life?
Employers can email their requirements to a central office with full details. Staff workers then post the openings on line and the TV channel simultaneously. Thousands will apply for each job and the most desperate advised to send their resumes and photos. The others are urged to seek another employment opportunity on the government web site or its TV channel.
Meantime, the governor of each state and the mayors of cities, will be asked to locate and list the vacant and abandoned factories or buildings in their communities that could be converted into low cost housing.
Our country is not great. It’s the greatest. During World War II army engineers could build bridges across the rivers overnight. By morning tanks, trucks and troops were crossing a river to engage and defeat the enemy. We need that sort of ingenuity during these catastrophic times now. Let’s build bridges over the troubled waters in America!

([e-mail])

[lagunajerry]

01:52 PM on 09/16/2011

Congress moves at a drunk snails pace. Even if both parties miraculously pulled together and worked for a solution, a snail even on Red Bull is still a snail. Our system is bloated, bogged down and inefficient.

Good luck with your lives my fellow American's. Don't hold your breath for the snail to round the corner and take the checkered flag! I rather have a cheetah but I will settle for a turtle.

[OldTulsan]

10:20 AM on 09/16/2011

The real villains are the global bankers and their elite friends who created a synthetic, over-lever­­aged casino in the quadrillio­­­ns of dollars.

They now wish to punish the working people of the world with draconian austerity measures, to make up for their losses.

They want the working people to fight among themselves­­­; e.g.:

o Democrat vs. Republican
o liberal vs. conservati­­ve
o socialist vs. capitalist
o Soros supporters vs. Koch brothers supporters­­.
o Pete Peterson supporters vs. senior citizena
o labor vs. management

Their divide and conquer strategy is working, as evidenced by the comments to this article, so they can operate freely as they loot the world's economy.

It's been two years since the financial meltdown. There haven't been any prosecutio­ns, and there won't be, like there were during the Savings and Loan crisis.

As it becomes more and more obvious that the Rule of Law is dead, some may advocate taking the law into their own hands.

Is that how America ends ?

[xlmb]

12:11 AM on 09/18/2011

But wasn't it beautiful OldTulsan how the repubs took over Queens/Bklyn after 88 years? Was the second Bush Jr. Administration horrible? Yes!!! Did I vote that year? No. Let us get Obama out and try again. Prior administrations may have sunked us, but not to this degree....

[OldTulsan]

10:44 AM on 09/18/2011

I live in the Houston area, and don't follow NYC politics.

"The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference." -- Ralph Nader

[NancyY]

05:16 AM on 09/16/2011

This current economy is all about "no faith". Business owners do not want to take on the risk of expansion, even if they can raise the capital; everyone wants to 'sit tight' and 'wait it out'. The problem is, we've been waiting a long time already and haven't seen any improvement.

[ABACADABRA RABBIT]

02:58 AM on 09/16/2011

Carter > Obama

"Change you can beLIEve in."

"I'm not concerned about a double-dip recession."

[OldTulsan]

02:15 AM on 09/16/2011

The late Sir James Goldsmith tried to warn Western countries about opening their labor markets to competition with 4 billion poorer Asians...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI
YouTube - 1. A prophetic interview with Sir James Goldsmith in 1994 Pt1

http://desip.igc.org/gatt01.html
Goldsmith on GATT: Part 1

"THE NEW UTOPIA: GATT AND GLOBAL FREE TRADE
by SIR JAMES GOLDSMITH

Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony

SENATE COMMERCE GATT IMPLEMENTA­TION
October 5, 1994

Global free trade has become a sacred principle of modern economic theory, a sort of generally accepted moral dogma. That is why it is so difficult to persuade politicians and economists to reassess its effects on a world economy which is changing radically.

The ultimate objective of global free trade is to create a worldwide market in products, services, capital and labour. Its instrument to achieve this is GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

I believe that GATT and the theories on which it is based are flawed. If it is implemented, it will impoverish and destabiliz­e the industrialized world while at the same time cruelly ravaging the third world..."

Other Western countries, such as Germany, took steps such as tariffs to protect their labor markets against global labor arbitrage.

But the U.S. adopted a cheap labor policy: offshoring.

[OldTulsan]

02:20 AM on 09/16/2011

A 2004 op-ed by Senator Schumer and Paul Craig Roberts...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/06/opinion/second-thoughts-on-free-trade.html
Second Thoughts on Free Trade - New York Times

"...Yet in that essay of 70 years ago, Keynes himself was beginning to question some of the assumption­s supporting free trade. The question today is whether the case for free trade made two centuries ago is undermined by the changes now evident in the modern global economy.

Two recent examples illustrate this concern. Over the next three years, a major New York securities firm plans to replace its team of 800 American software engineers, who each earns about $150,000 per year, with an equally competent team in India earning an average of only $20,000. Second, within five years the number of radiologis­ts in this country is expected to decline significan­tly because M.R.I. data can be sent over the Internet to Asian radiologis­ts capable of diagnosing the problem at a small fraction of the cost.

[snip]

We are concerned that the United States may be entering a new economic era in which American workers will face direct global competitio­n at almost every job level -- from the machinist to the software engineer to the Wall Street analyst. Any worker whose job does not require daily face-to-fa­ce interactio­n is now in jeopardy of being replaced by a lower-paid­, equally skilled worker thousands of miles away..."

[Wesley Holbrook]

12:47 AM on 09/16/2011

Yeah, the GOP in the House have been in control since January. Where are their jobs plans they ran on, back in November??? The private sector isn't producing any to brag about in America. Jobs that don't provide a livable wage are self-defeating. Consumerists are cutting back on their expenses. If you can't receive a decent wage, you can't afford healthcare insurance. So, are we to be relegated into dead end, lower paying jobs??? The ole, "God bless America," isn't going to get it anymore. Our Country has become second rate. With the unprecendented increase in avarice, America is now like Rome of old; it is decaying from within. So be it... Never thought I'd be able to say that about America. Its best days are behind it. With an economy that is bankrupted and isn't producing much of anything, any educated guess as to when it falls?

[Myra Williams]

11:32 PM on 09/15/2011

From the National Urban League: According to the August jobs report, the U.S. unemployment rate remains unchanged at 9.1% however Black unemployment rate rose to 16.7%...sad. http://www.iamempowered.com/node/21466

[conservativewhitemale]

10:43 PM on 09/15/2011

Our company is looking to hire another delivery driver. It amazes me that upper management is certain they can fill the 10.00/hr position with a college graduate. Twenty five years with my current company, and I have never, ever, seen the brutality of this current climate. These really are bizzar times..

[OldTulsan]

10:46 PM on 09/15/2011

Is a PhD required for the driver position ?

[dwpfff]

11:58 PM on 09/15/2011

Under Mr. Obama's economic policies.

[GonzoFL]

10:26 PM on 09/15/2011

"Wall Street analysts had been looking for a dip to 410,000."

If Wall Street analysts want to see a dip...they need only to look in their mirrors. But then again,Vampires don't have a reflection...............

[fairandbalanced100]

10:09 PM on 09/15/2011

Obama's first stimulus saved or created 3 million jobs & got us out of Bush's big recession.
But the stimulus is wearing off & we need to pass the new jobs bill to create another
million jobs & stop us from going back into recession.

[dwpfff]

10:29 PM on 09/15/2011

Wrong. It paid off his political contributors. NO jobs. 4.7% to 16% here in California under Obama policies. Our economy today is WORSE than on the last day of GW's term of office. Three years of "trial and error" spending experiments and getting WORSE! The Liberals must start to understand that Obama economic policies do not work. We will NEVER spend our way to prosperity. Not that hard to understand, when you start thinking instead of "doting". The private sector (business and industry) will solve this problem as soon as Mr. Obama gets out of the way.

[OldTulsan]

10:36 PM on 09/15/2011

By continuing to offshore jobs....

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001854367_bushecon10.html
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Bush report: Sending jobs overseas helps U.S.

"WASHINGTO­N — The movement of American factory jobs and white-coll­ar work to other countries is part of a positive transforma­tion that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocatio­n, the Bush administra­tion said yesterday.

The embrace of foreign "outsourci­ng," an accelerati­ng trend that has contribute­d to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president'­s annual report to Congress on the U.S. economy.

"Outsourci­ng is just a new way of doing internatio­nal trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."

[snip]

Last year's Economic Report of the President predicted that 1.7 million jobs would be created in 2003. Instead, the nation lost 53,000 jobs. In Bush's three years in office, 2.2 million jobs have disappeare­d.

Since the Great Depression­, it has never taken this long for the economy to begin creating jobs after emerging from a recession. After the last recession ended in 1991, it took 14 months for employment to begin expanding. Current problems with the economy have gone on nearly twice as long, 26 months..."

[atx888]

09:37 PM on 09/15/2011

We would be in a full blown depression if the republicans had their way. The people that got us into this mess cannot be trusted to get us out of it. They got no plans of their own, and attack everything the president do to turn the economy around.

[OldTulsan]

09:18 PM on 09/15/2011

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/15/news/economy/unemployment_benefits/index.htm
First-time unemployment claims rise to 428,000 - Sep. 15, 2011

"...Since April, initial claims have chopped around 400,000, a level economists often say indicates hiring is still too weak to bring down the unemployment rate, which is currently at 9.1%.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com were expecting initial claims to fall to 410,000 in the latest week..."

[richman99]

08:14 PM on 09/15/2011

Just more of that "Hope and Change" everybody thought Obama was going to bring us!! What fools....

[Yamagatagirl]

08:43 PM on 09/15/2011

Sure because the republicans have all the answers......

[fairandbalanced100]

10:13 PM on 09/15/2011

Republicans don't have any good answers . Their main policy is to obstruct
everything Obama & Democrats try to pass to help economy.
That is why they are only approved by 15%.

[richman99]

09:00 PM on 09/16/2011

Well, at lesat we all know Obama doesn't have any answers... he has proved it!!!