U.S. Jobless Claims Drop To Lowest Level In Three And A Half Years

WASHINGTON - New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits dropped to a 3-1/2 year low last week, a government report showed on Thursday, suggesting the labor market recovery was gaining speed.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 366,000, the Labor Department said. That was the lowest level since May 2008.

The prior week's claims data was revised up to 385,000 from the previously reported 381,000.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 390,000 last week.

The unexpected drop in claims last week pushed them closer to the 350,000 mark that analysts say signals labor market strength.

It offered further evidence of increased momentum in the pace of economic activity, even though retail sales rose modestly in November. This is in sharp contrast to Europe, where t he festering debt crisis has already pushed some economies into recession.

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday acknowledged the improvement in the jobs market, but said unemployment remained high. The jobless rate dropped to a 2-1/2 year low of 8.6 percent in Nove mber.

The U.S. central bank said the debt crisis gripping Europe was a big risk to the U.S. economy, which it described as "expanding moderately".

A Labor Department official said there was nothing unusual in the state level data and noted that only one state had been estimated.

The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends, fell 6,500 to 387,750 -- the lowest since mid-July 2008.

The number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid edged up 4,000 to 3.6 million in the week ended December 3.

Economists had forecast so-called continuing claims rising to 3.63 million from a previously reported 3.58 million.

The number of Americans on emergency unemployment benefits increased 254,642 to 3.05 million in the week ended November 26, the latest week for which data is available.

A total of 7.45 million people were claiming unemployment benefits during that period under all programs, up 874,670 from the prior week.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[SkreetGil1]

06:46 PM on 12/17/2011

Naw, we've just given up.

Most people I know over 50 are unemployed or working pt/temp jobs. And not in their field.

None have had full time employment in 4 years.

None have benefits.

[Izzy66]

11:37 AM on 12/16/2011

NAFTA did not cause all of the outsourcing, the rabid outsourcing began in '02 and '03, with the passing of the Singapore and East Indian Free Trade Agreements. Toward the end of Bush's first term, a negative job growth was beginning, and continued throughout his second term.
The 2008 crash and subsequent loss of millions more jobs placed a dent so deep into our economic infrastructure that our leaders now say massive unemployment will be the norm.
Millions now thrusted into poverty, many did NOT purchase a home beyond their means and DID save for retirement. But have lost everything because companies have outsourced, shut down or cut swaths of workers to cut costs.
And all that money we baby boomers paid into the safety net while we were working, will now be denied us if the GOP has their way. My Parents (75) and I (55) all agree that THEY were probably the last generation to live, work and retire comfortably in the U.S. I now feel I have more in common with my Great Grandmother's time than the America my parents lived in.

[wackette]

08:50 AM on 12/16/2011

Another example of big company-owned media trying to brainwash the masses... NOTHING is
improving in our economy, it's getting WORSE by the minute.

[AZreb]

07:20 AM on 12/16/2011

What will the numbers be in February, March, April of 2012? Most of the hiring now is seasonal, part-time, minimum wage, no benefits - plus, if the unemployment funding is cut off after the first of 2012, more will be dropped off the rolls and not counted (NON-persons).

Cynic (realist) that I am, I will wait til after the first of the year and see what happens. CA alone will have over 300,000 dropped if unemployment money is stopped - two other states are high in numbers, too, and the three states will total over half a million people. Add to that the other 47 states (or 54, as our president has said) and there will be well over the 2-3 million mark.

[ssnwbrd]

07:11 AM on 12/16/2011

How many of those people 3 years ago still are out of work? Quite a few and they do not show on the unemployme­nt charts anymore having ran out of benefits. Reality is if congress would have done what Bush asked in 2002 this debacle could have been sidesteppe­d. Congress did not act until 2007 and by that time the damage was already done. Christmas temporary employment numbers always make the reality look better but it is not.

Presidents ask for laws. Congress makes them. Bush was not a real good president but he is not the one who put you out of work. Congress was. They were the problem then and still remain the problem now on both sides of the isle.

[AZreb]

07:21 AM on 12/16/2011

fanned - the only jobs congress worries about are their own with all the goodies attached.

[spinotter11]

07:40 AM on 12/16/2011

Anyone who is still looking for work is counted, whether the person draws unemployment benefits or not. Read about it - BLS website, CPS survey.

[ssnwbrd]

07:53 AM on 12/16/2011

Next post below my post aims at BLS graphs showing number of people who could work and actual number that are. They are counted as looking for work only if they attepmted to get more unemployment by were told no.... in other words desperate

Tell fact at BLS site is 146 million plus were working in 2008 139 million work now. We have more people in this country now number should be going up not down

The thread does not say that does it?????????? Just another OBAMA quarter-truth

[Izzy66]

11:47 AM on 12/16/2011

You are only counted if you are still job searching through your State's unemployment site - even if you AREN'T collecting benefits.

I gave up on the site when the jobs posted were becoming more and more obscure, low pay, temporary and not nearly the quantity of opportunities other job sites have. (jobseekers, Craig's List, INeedAJob.com)
So even though I'm looking, I am not counted. And the so-called 'household phone calls' they make? Not ONE Nation-wide contact our of networking, family, coworkers, friends and business owners have yet to ever receive one of those calls. Its bogus.

[wsdave]

01:29 AM on 12/16/2011

If that's the good news, here's the bad:

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

[MiddleMolly]

02:02 AM on 12/16/2011

Maybe. But the drop of 3% may also represent Baby Boomers retiring. The first of the Baby Boomers started to approach retirement age in the 2008 or 2009, just as the economy collapsed. We don't know why people have left the labor force, which means they have stopped looking for work. The number of people who "want to work" but haven't looked lately has not been increasing that much; in fact, in many months it has declined. Can you count someone as unemployed if they tell you they don't want a job?

[Raccoon1]

06:56 AM on 12/16/2011

......and many baby boomers who might otherwise have been retiring are not retiring because of the current economy.

[Scott Leland]

10:20 AM on 12/16/2011

Yes, but the many of the Boomers are being forced to "retire" by corporations like the Polaris Snowmobile company that is investing their record profits in a new facility in Mexico so it can get rid-of it's senior employees.

[cowbystone]

01:17 AM on 12/16/2011

didnt i just read this same article this morning?

[PatWright2457]

12:53 AM on 12/16/2011

Wait till Perry takes credit for all the jobs he has created in Texas, lowering the unemployment figures. What he WON'T tell you is the number of Texas teachers, firefighters and policemen who have lost their jobs so he can take credit for balancing the budget. On the backs of Texas children and anyone who has an emergency.

[Scott Leland]

10:25 AM on 12/16/2011

A lot of "jobs created" in Texas are at warehouses that offload finished goods from Mexican trucks and transfer them to American trucks to be shipped to stores. When Mexican trucks are allowed to deliver anywhere in the U.S., as called-for under the North American Free Trade Agreement, those minimum wage jobs are going to be eliminated.

[WI Patriot]

12:35 AM on 12/16/2011

Agree as others have said - the last two sentances tell it all.

Initial unemployment claims are down because after two years and a year of emergency payments - people can no longer file claims, so its a false-positive report and not a really good indicator.

"The number of Americans on emergency unemployment benefits increased 254,642 to 3.05 million in the week ended November 26, the latest week for which data is available.

A total of 7.45 million people were claiming unemployment benefits during that period under all programs, up 874,670 from the prior week."

[hagenjr]

11:37 PM on 12/15/2011

Smoke and mirrors.

The last statement sums it up. +874,670.

Smoke and mirrors.

[SCJohnson]

11:37 PM on 12/15/2011

The last two sentences tell the real story.

"The number of Americans on emergency unemployment benefits increased 254,642 to 3.05 million in the week ended November 26, the latest week for which data is available.

A total of 7.45 million people were claiming unemployment benefits during that period under all programs, up 874,670 from the prior week."

[PatWright2457]

11:27 AM on 12/16/2011

But, but..the TP claim that the rich and the corporations will create all these jobs as long as we don't make them pay any tax- how long do they have to have a free ride before we see these jobs?

[Teresa Young]

11:34 PM on 12/15/2011

I wonder what kind of person believe that the numbers areactually better, they would have to be real stupid?

[dfinch]

12:10 AM on 12/16/2011

Anyone that is watching these figures should know that these last figures were minipulated

[redraspberry]

09:26 AM on 12/16/2011

There will be larger revised numbers come next month.

[SCJohnson]

11:33 PM on 12/15/2011

These numbers would seem to indicate that we have run out of people to lay off, not that are enough new jobs being created to pull us out of the recession.

[Scott Leland]

10:29 AM on 12/16/2011

Yes, the corporations have been firing thousands of their workers like the Caterpillar corporation and bragging about their "lean manufacturing" program in full page ads in the "Wall Street Journal."

We have to let the corporations know we will appreciate them hiring Americans to get the Recovery going:

http://www.flixya.com/blog/3201910/Beautiful-Butterflys

[tonycgi]

11:01 PM on 12/15/2011

Number are numbers, over 20% of Americans are Un-Employed, the sad thing is that we don't report the numbers that have drop from the benifit rolls or who have just given up

[MiddleMolly]

11:26 PM on 12/15/2011

The numbers reported here have nothing to do with who has or has not dropped from the rolls. Today's report is of initial claims, and initial claims, meaning people newly unemployed, are down.

There is no evidence that 20% of the people are unemployed unless you want to count people who do not want or need a job. If you count the officially unemployed, people working part-time who want full-time work, and people who want a job but haven't looked recently (which includes the discouraged workers), you get 17.7% unemployed, and that dropped .5% this month.

[cowbystone]

01:20 AM on 12/16/2011

wow, split any hairs lately?

[Scott Leland]

10:34 AM on 12/16/2011

I believe that more Americans would rather work full-time but because they cannot find a job that meets their personal standards are going to graduate school in the belief that by improving their educational level (at the same time accruing high student loan debt) they will be more employable. So I think that there are many-more Americans that are actually unemployed.

[stuart100s]

09:55 PM on 12/15/2011

As soon as the Dems can eliminate the rest of the jobs, wait 99 weeks and the jobless claims will drop to zero. Boy will they be able to crow then. The jobless claims drop to the lowest level ever.

[MiddleMolly]

11:27 PM on 12/15/2011

This has to be one of the most absurd comments here. How much are you getting paid for these kinds of comments?

[stuart100s]

11:35 PM on 12/15/2011

It makes as much sense as the headline of this article. It makes as much sense as you, judging from what you have written.

[SCJohnson]

11:36 PM on 12/15/2011

Judging from the quality of his post, I would say he has the GOP dream job, pays minimum wage (or he's actually posting from Indonesia).

[webwzrd]

03:46 AM on 12/16/2011

Please tell us how Dems eliminated the jobs. I can tell you how Republicans didn't, with budget cuts that have cost over 1.6 million of them, even after the Dems saved or created 4.2 million through the stimulus and saving the auto industry. If not for Republicans, unemployment would be at 7.5%.

[stuart100s]

09:45 AM on 12/16/2011

Are you really that slow that you don't understand how Dems are eliminating jobs?
Government doesn't create jobs, all the money they take from us in taxes comes from taxpayers (one way or another) .
1) I am not hiring because every week the current administration is trying to raise my taxes in one way or another. Money that I send to the Feds is money not available to hire.
2) I believe we needed health care reform (hcr) , but after a year no one can tell me what it says, what it will do, or what it will cost. I am forced to hoard cash to pay for regulations that I don't understand, can't budget for, and no one can explain to me.
3) Yesterday, I got a new packet of regulations from the government that I will have to comply with. I have to read it and determine if I will have to lay anyone off in order to pay for it. I can no longer keep up with all the rules and still run the factory. I will probably hire a nonproductive human resource person, at the cost of more manufacturing jobs. At some point I will move the facility to a country that will facilitate operations not compound them. I didn't want to learn spanish, but I am going to have to.

[stuart100s]

09:53 AM on 12/16/2011

Did I mention that my state raised my unemployment contribution 1600% last year.
That tax increase will make me want to hire more people so that I can pay 16 times the rate I used to pay. The did this even though I was not responsible for any unemployed workers.

Did you know that my state borrowed money to pay unemployment benefits, defaulted on the loan, and the federal government raised my taxes to pay for the states failure to repay the loan?

How can you talk about "saved or created' phantom jobs by spending money we don't have, with a straight face. Just because he went to Harvard doesn't make him right. How many ideologes should I have to pay for? At what point do I say, No mas?