Political Economy category archive

No great, but not horrible.

Applications for unemployment benefits in the U.S. rose to 317,000 last week, holding below this year’s average and signaling sustained progress in the labor market.

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The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, climbed to 315,250 from 310,500 in the prior week.

The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits increased by 11,000 to 2.61 million in the period ended May 31. The unemployment rate among people eligible for benefits held at 2 percent during that period, today’s report showed.

Find out how:

James Howard Kuntsler seems to be auditioning as Cassandra; he thinks we need to start paying attention to what’s really going on. A nugget:

Now we’re in the early stage of expensive oil, and a lot of things that seemed to work wonderfully well before don’t work so well now. The conveyer belt of cheap manufactured goods from China to the Wal-Marts and Target stores doesn’t work so well when the American customers lose their incomes and have to spend their government stipends on gasoline because they were born into a world where driving everywhere for everything is mandatory, and because central-bank meddling adds to the horrendous inflation of food prices.

Now there’s great fanfare over a “manufacturing renaissance” in the United States, based on the idea that the work will be done by robots. What kind of foolish Popular Mechanics porn fantasy is this? If human beings have only a minor administrative role in this set-up, what do two hundred million American adults do for a livelihood?

All I need to do to know he’s on to something is look at the rise in sea level in the past 50 years just over there near where I live.

Afterthought:

“Popular Mechanics porn fantasy.” Heh.

Mildly encouraging.

The four-week average for jobless claims fell to 310,250 in the period ended May 31, the lowest since June 2007, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington.

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The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits dropped by 20,000 to 2.6 million in the week ended May 24, the fewest since October 2007.

Jobless claims fell by 27,000 to 300,000 in the week ended May 24, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 50 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 318,000. The four-week average declined to the lowest level since August 2007, before the last recession began.

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The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, decreased to 311,500 from 322,750 the week before.

There is a lesson here: Play the percentages. Always bet against Bloomberg’s experts.

Via Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog.

Afterthought:

The last time I wrote “antidisestablishmentarianism,” I was in school and I had to write it 500 times.

With a little practice, you can hold four pencils in your hand . . . .

Back above 300k.

Jobless claims increased by 28,000 to 326,000 in the week ended May 17, after 298,000 filings a week earlier that were higher than initially reported, . . . .

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The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure than the weekly figures, fell to 322,500 last week from 323,500.
Total Beneficiaries

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The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits dropped by 13,000 to 2.65 million in the week ended May 10.

Bloomberg’s headline was Jobless Claims in U.S. Increased More Than Forecast. Given the track record of their forecasters, that their forecasters got it wrong is hardly headline news.

Wall Street’s fascination with “forecasters” is a blight and a plague. If a company makes a profit, but it’s not as great as “forecasters” forecast, the stock tanks. If that same company makes a loss, but the loss is less than the forecasters forecast, the stock soars. This shows, more than anything else, that “high finance” is mostly three card monte in three-piece suits.

In what other area outside of “reality” television is the work of what are essentially mediums minus turbans taken so seriously?

Under 300k for the first time since I started following them here.

Jobless claims dropped by 24,000 to 297,000 in the week ended May 10, less than any economist projected in a Bloomberg survey and the least since May 2007, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington. The median estimate of 49 economists surveyed was 320,000.

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The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, dropped to 323,250 from 325,250 the week before.

The number of people continuing to collect benefits declined by 9,000 to 2.67 million in the week ended May 3, the fewest since December 2007.

Unchanged: The track record of Bloomberg’s “experts,” who couldn’t pick the winner in a one-horse race.

In the middle of a response to one of George Will’s typically muddled attempts to make contemporary conservatism to appear to have some foundation other than greed and bigotry, Allen Starbuck delivers this gem:

That was an example of affirmative action prior to the 1970s, when it became well-known, and notorious in some circles.

Affirmative action was then known as segregation (less euphemistic than affirmative action), and protected whites from competition by blacks, not only in the educational world, but the job market. There were always a few blacks who achieved professional status and well-paid jobs, but they were always a small minority because of segregation, whether legal or merely customary.

Think about it.

Full Disclosure:

I stopped reading George Will regularly a long time ago. After a while, watching someone repeatedly putting lipstick on a succession of pigs gets old.

A little better. We’ll see what happens when the schools let out.

Jobless claims fell 26,000 to 319,000 in the week ended May 3 from a revised 345,000 in the prior period, the Labor Department reported today in Washington.

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The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, climbed to 324,750 from 320,250 the week before.

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The number of people continuing to collect benefits dropped by 76,000 to 2.69 million in the week ended April 26.

They live in gilded ages.

Not so good.

Jobless claims rose by 14,000 to 344,000 in the period ended April 26, the highest level since Feb. 22, Labor Department data showed today in Washington

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The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, increased to 320,000 from 317,000 in the prior week.

The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits rose by 97,000 to 2.77 million in the week ended April 19.

Back up a bit.

Jobless claims increased by 24,000 to 329,000 in the week ended April 19, the most in a month, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington.

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The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, climbed to 316,750 from 312,000 the week before, the lowest since 2007.

The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits dropped by 61,000 to 2.68 million in the week ended April 12, the fewest since December 2007.

They run the show.

Via Down with Tyranny, which has the full interview.

Learning that there is a Pigg River just leaves me hog-tied.

The Pigg River in Franklin County has gotten a clean bill of health by the health department as of Thursday night.

Last week, 30,000 gallons of cow manure spilled into the river from a holding lagoon near the intersection of Calico Rock Road and 6 Mile Post west of Rocky Mount.

From the site:

Elon James White talks with Fatima Goss Graves, VP of Education and Employment at the National Women’s Law Center, about the Wage gap and the breakdown of how the gap works for Women Of Color.

Better news than usual.

Jobless claims decreased by 32,000 to 300,000 in the week ended April 5, the lowest since May 2007, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington.

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The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, fell to 316,250 — the lowest since the end of September — from 321,000 the week before.

Writing at the Inky, James Howard Kunstler suggests that “globalism” is dead. I’ve not figured out my opinion on his thesis, but I think it’s worth a read. Here’s a snippet:

One part of our ever-evolving reality is that the global economy is in the process of cracking up. Globalism was not a permanent installation in the human condition. Rather, it was a set of transient economic relations brought about by special circumstances in a particular time of history – namely, 100 years of cheap energy and about 50 years of relative peace between the larger nations. That’s all it was. And now it’s dissolving because energy is increasingly non-cheap, and that is causing a lot of friction between nations utterly addicted to high flows of cheap oil and gas.

No significant change.

Jobless claims increased 16,000 in the period ended March 29 to a five-week high of 326,000, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. A revised 310,000 applications were filed in the previous week, the fewest since Sept. 7.

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The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, was little changed at 319,500 from 319,250 the week before.

The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits rose by 22,000 to 2.84 million in the week ended March 22.