Economic 'recovery' falters yet again

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

Reuters: Jobless claims rise to near nine-month high​

(Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level in nearly nine months, casting a shadow on the labor market.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 379,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was the highest level since March and marked the second straight week that claims have risen.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected first-time applications to fall to 334,000 last week.

The four-week moving average for new claims, which irons out week-to-week volatility, increased 13,250 to 343,500.

This is the second week in a row numbers have jumped dramatically, after jobless claims supposedly -- and I emphasize "supposedly" -- fell the last week of November to under 300K, thus bringing the so-called unemployment rate to 7.0% for the first time Great Pretender has been in office. Now, at a season when part-time work traditionally doubles or triples, particularly for college students coming home for Christmas, we're seeing a massive increase?

Something doesn't add up, and I suspect it is because someone under Great Pretender's control is fudging the math. This comes on the heals of a Rasmussen Poll earlier this week that shows that nearly 3/4 of Americans believe we're still in a recession, despite the government's numbers showing we're not. Again, somebody's lying, and it isn't the American people.

 

[InTheLight]

Unemployment is always the last economic indicator to show movement. There's plenty of other evidence that the recovery is occurring. It's a weak recovery but it's slowly happening. It's probably the weakest and slowest recovery in history.

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

Extended Unemployment Benefits end for 1.3 million Americans on December 28. Discretionary and disposable income have already taken hits this year, and the implementation of the ACA is going to have a tremendous negative impact on those factors in 2014. Retailers say this is shaping up as an abysmal Christmas season for them, and now we see the likelihood that someone in government is fudging the numbers to make them look good at the end of each month, but eventually that will catch up with them. You can't hide unemployment claims forever.

Meanwhile, our labor participation rate has shrunk to the levels of the late 1970s when we were in the worst recession of the 20th Century. Only 63% of our able-bodied Americans are actually working. This is a sign of a seriously ailing economy, whether there are statistical signs of "recovery" or not.