Thread: U.S. jobless claims jump to 16-year high

U.S. jobless claims jump to 16-year high


WASHINGTON - New claims for unemployment benefits jumped last week to a 16-year high, the Labor Department said Thursday, providing more evidence of a rapidly weakening job market expected to get even worse next year.

The government said new applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 542,000 from a downwardly revised figure of 515,000 in the previous week. That’s much higher than Wall Street economists’ expectations of 505,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

That is also the highest level of claims since July 1992, the department said, when the U.S. economy was coming out of a recession.

The four-week average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations, was even worse: it rose to 506,500, the highest in more than 25 years.

In addition, the number of people continuing to claim unemployment insurance rose sharply for the third straight week to more than 4 million, the highest since December 1982, when the economy was in a painful recession.

Those figures partly reflect growth in the labor force, which has increased by about half since the early 1980s.

The figures likely will cause some economists to increase their projections for the unemployment rate this year. Many already expect unemployment to reach 7 percent by early next year and 8 percent by the end of 2009.

The rate in October was 6.5 percent, and last year the rate averaged 4.6 percent.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday released projections that the jobless rate will climb to between 7.1 percent and 7.6 percent next year, according to documents from the Fed’s Oct. 29 closed-door deliberations on interest rate policy.

Initial claims have been driven higher in the past several months by a slowing economy hit by the financial crisis, and cutbacks in consumer and business spending.

Economists consider jobless claims a timely, if volatile, indication of how rapidly companies are laying off workers. Employees who quit or are fired for cause are not eligible for benefits.

Several companies announced mass layoffs in the past week, including Citigroup Inc., Union Pacific Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27820486

After taking into account people whose unemployment checks have run out and people working part time because they can not find full time work the actual unemployment rate is probably closer to 10%.

I have a feeling that American workers are going to have to accept about half of the pay that were used to just to keep up with global pay, or find a new job! Especially Union Auto workers! Were all going to have to go down a peg because of what the greed by big business and Unions and wall st has put us into!! I can't see how we can avoid it, can you?

It's alot worse than what their figures show. There's a whole load out there not being counted at all. The amount of businesses getting rid of people by means of making it impossible to qualify for un-employment is staggering. They were having a job fair at Navy Pier in Chicago from 5.30AM to 8:30 AM (a whopping 3 hours) and word is people started lining up by midnight to wait in the cold to be first in line. They were ripping off a list of more business closings from hot-dog production to the Dial soap factory to toy stores.......to city jobs and state jobs, on down the line......

Yes, we are living in very scary times.