New Jobless Claims Bounce Back Up

This morning, the Labor Department announced that the number of people making initial jobless claims increased sharply last week, up by 37,000 to 464,000. The sustained, high number of initial claims feeds the sustained, high jobless rate. Economists say initial claims need to fall into the 300,000s to demonstrate More…

Weekly Initial Jobless Claims Fall to Two-Year Low

Today, the Labor Department announced that weekly initial jobless claims had fallen to a nearly two-year low — declining 29,000 to 429,000. That is the lowest number of initial claimants since the third week of August 2008. Here is a chart of weekly claims since the beginning of 2008, More…

Unemployment Remains in a State of Crisis

The May jobs number is out, and at first blush it looks good. The economy added 431,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate tracked down to 9.7 percent. But the report, in reality, is terrible, another sign of the long-standing crisis of joblessness in the United States. Economists More…

Unemployment Falls in 93 Percent of Metro Areas

Today, the Labor Department released its April survey of unemployment in 372 metropolitan areas across the United States. And it is a very good report: The rate of joblessness dropped in 346 areas, rose in 12 and remained flat in 14. That is a significant month-to-month improvement, as in More…

The Crisis of Long-Term Unemployment

This week, Jesse Rothstein, the chief economist at the Labor Department, spoke at the Economic Policy Institute, and the organization just posted the slides. Congress is losing its stomach for funding extended benefits. But, as the slides show, long-term unemployment remains a major problem.

Initial Unemployment Claims Fall Again, Remain High

This morning, the Labor Department released an incrementally improved report on initial jobless claims. The number of Americans filing fell for the third straight week to 444,000, down from 451,000 the week before.

Calculated Risk posts the graph that makes it clear why this is not exactly a More…

Solis Goes After Massey for Pattern of Safety Violations

This morning, it was President Obama blaming Massey Energy (among others) for not doing more to prevent last week’s deadly mining blast in West Virginia. This afternoon, it was Hilda Solis.

In an interview with MSNBC, the Labor secretary said that while all mining companies have experienced safety More…

Initial Jobless Claims Increase

Initial unemployment applications unexpectedly increased from 460,000 last week to 484,000 this week.

An unnamed Labor Department official quoted in the wire stories says:  “Volatility is always associated with the Easter holiday” and “This is more attributable to administrative factors than to possible layoffs. I did not see More…

Initial Unemployment Claims Rise Unexpectedly

This morning, the Labor Department announced that 460,000 Americans applied for unemployment benefits for the first time — up from the week before and something of a surprise to economists, who had estimated claims to be around 435,000. These initial applications came mostly from people whose More…

Dozens More Massey Mines Cited as Unsafe

The federal investigators readying their probe into the massive explosion that killed at least 25 West Virginia coal miners this week might take note: The dozens of other active tunnel mines owned by the same energy company have run up thousands of safety violations this year alone, according to a More…