July 9, 2020 @ 7:24 pm | Breaking News |
These days you can’t read an economic report, especially a jobs report, without a calendar. Today’s report on initial claims for unemployment — a weekly number for the week ended July 4–showed that new claims for unemployment continued their...
June 24, 2020 @ 7:24 pm | Breaking News |
In May governments shed more than 570,000 workers as states and cities grappled with huge budget shortfalls created by the coronavirus pandemic and shutdowns of economic activity imposed in an effort to get the outbreak under control. those layoffs are going to get...
June 18, 2020 @ 6:59 pm | Breaking News |
If the contests between the stock market–which sees a rapid V-shaped recovery for the economy–and the Federal Reserve–which sees a slow recovery very stretching over two years, today’s report on New Claims for Unemployment comes down on slow...
June 11, 2020 @ 7:39 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits continued to trend lower with 1.54 million workers applying in the week ended June 6. That’s down from 1.9 million initial claims in the prior week. (Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected 1.55 million...
June 5, 2020 @ 7:27 pm | Buy Hold Sell |
I’d argue the last thing we needed today was good news. In case you’re been hiding under a rock, you know that the economy unexpectedly added 2.5 million jobs in May and the unemployment rate fell to 13.3%. (Read my immediately prior post for a run down of...
June 5, 2020 @ 7:23 pm | Breaking News |
According to the official Labor Department report on jobs and unemployment for May, the economy added 2.5 million workers in the month and the unemployment rate fell to 13.3% (from 14.7% in April.) Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected a 6 million drop in...
June 5, 2020 @ 7:19 pm | Breaking News |
The U.S. economy added 2.5 million jobs in May, the Labor Department reported today. The official rate of unemployment fell to 13.3% from 14.7%. In April the economy had shed 20.5 million jobs. Economists were surprised by the gains, to put it mildly. The consensus...
June 4, 2020 @ 7:44 pm | Breaking News |
Initial claims for unemployment for regular state programs totaled 1.88 million for the week ended May 30, according to the Labor Department. (This total does not include self-employed or gig workers that are now receiving unemployment under newly passed coronavirus...
June 3, 2020 @ 7:01 pm | Breaking News |
Tomorrow it’s Thursday and time for another weekly report on initial claims for unemployment. In absolute terms the numbers are likely to be grim. Economists project that tomorrow’s report will show another 1.8 million workers have filed new claims for...
May 28, 2020 @ 7:11 pm | Breaking News |
The stock market is seeing the glass as half full this morning. This morning the Labor Department reported that 2.12 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment in the week that ended on May 23. That is down from 2.45 million initial claims in the prior week...
May 14, 2020 @ 7:52 pm | Breaking News |
Initial jobless claims totaled 2.98 million for the week ended May 9, the Labor Department reported today. That’s down from last week’s 3.18 million claims and marks a sixth straight week of declines. But the figure was higher than the 2.5 million claims...
May 7, 2020 @ 7:32 pm | Breaking News |
Initial claims for unemployment totaled 3.17 million for the week ended May 2, the Labor Department reported today. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected 3 million new claims for the week. This week’s total was down from the 3.85 million initial claims...
May 6, 2020 @ 7:03 pm | Breaking News |
Employment at U.S. companies plummeted in April by the most in records back to 2002, according to numbers fro the ADP Research Institute release today.. The report reflects data through April 12 in order to align with the report from the Labor Department for April,...
April 30, 2020 @ 5:45 pm | Breaking News |
The job losses continued, as expected, with 3.84 million people filing new claims for unemployment in the week that ended on April 25. That follows on 4.44 million new claims for unemployment in the prior week. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected 3.5...
April 23, 2020 @ 6:39 pm | Breaking News |
More than 4.4 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits for the week ended April 18, according to the Labor Department today. From March 15 to April 18 26.5 million people have filed initial claims for unemployment. Economists estimate that the national...
April 22, 2020 @ 7:32 pm | Breaking News |
The projections from economists are that the total initial claims for unemployment will fall to 4.5 million for the week ended on April 18. That would still be a horrendous number. The total weekly figure at the beginning of this spike was 280,000. Last week, 5.25...
April 16, 2020 @ 7:12 pm | Breaking News |
5.245 million more people filed initial claims for unemployment in the week ended April 11, the Labor Department reported this morning. That was down from the prior week’s 6.615 million (revised upwards from an initial report of 6.606 million.) But it still...
April 9, 2020 @ 7:06 pm | Breaking News |
Just too much potentially market-moving news this morning. I count three stories in that category and it’s only noon. But let’s begin. 6.61 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment in the week ended April 4, the Labor Department reported...
April 3, 2020 @ 7:06 pm | Breaking News |
The U.S economy lost 701,000 jobs in March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced this morning. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in March from 3.5%, a 50-year low, in February. The survey behind the numbers was completed by March 12 so it didn’t capture the...
April 2, 2020 @ 7:31 pm | Breaking News |
I’m finding it hard to wrap my head around exactly how bad the economy is and how fast the collapse has been. Today’s report of 6.65 million new claims for unemployment for the week ended March 28 exploded through the record number of new claims set just...
March 26, 2020 @ 7:14 pm | Breaking News |
Today Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the surge in Americans filing for unemployment benefits is “not relevant.” Mnuchin told CNBC, “The president is protecting those people.” For the week ended March 21, initial claims for unemployment soared to a record 3.28...
March 19, 2020 @ 7:43 pm | Breaking News |
This morning the Department of Labor announced that new claims for unemployment for the week ending March 14 climbed to 281,000. That was up from 211,000 in the prior week. And much worse than the 220,000 projected by ecomomists. The worst news is that this spike in...
February 6, 2020 @ 7:07 pm | Breaking News |
The ADP Research Institute report on private payrolls, released yesterday, showed a gain of 291,000 jobs in January. That blew away economist forecasts for 157,000 net new jobs in the month, according to Bloomberg’s survey of economists. The January gain would...
January 10, 2020 @ 7:36 pm | Breaking News |
The U.S. economy added 145,000 jobs in December That did set a record of 10 years of job growth for the economy. But the 145,000 job growth in December was below the 256,000 added in November and below the 160,000 expected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. (I would...
December 6, 2019 @ 7:46 pm | Breaking News |
The United States added 266,000 jobs in November and the official unemployment rate fell to 3.5%. The results were buoyed by the return to jobs of 41,300 General Motors workers after the settlement of that strike. But the November total was still impressively stronger...
October 3, 2019 @ 8:00 pm | Breaking News |
The trend in U.S. financial markets this week has pointed down on data that shows the U.S. economy is slowing. Certainly the disappointing numbers in both the manufacturing and services Purchasing Managers Indexes have supported that conclusion. That could all change...
August 2, 2019 @ 7:31 pm | Breaking News |
The U.S. economy added 164,000 jobs in July. That’s down from the 193,000 jobs added in June (revised down from an initial 224,000) and slightly higher than the 160,000 jobs forecast by economists surveyed by Briefing.com. At 3.7% the headline unemployment rate...
June 6, 2019 @ 7:23 pm | Breaking News, Volatility |
Tomorrow, Friday, June 7, brings the May jobs report. Right now economists surveyed by Bloomberg are looking for the economy to add a robust 175,000 jobs with unemployment holding steady at 3.6% (as 49-year low) and average hourly wages growing at a very positive 3.2%...
April 5, 2019 @ 8:00 pm | Breaking News, You May Have Missed |
The U.S. economy added 196,000 net new jobs in March. That’s a huge increase from the 33,000 jobs added in February (revised upward from the original 20,000) and showed that the plunge in the February jobs total was an aberration. Economists surveyed by...
March 8, 2019 @ 7:52 pm | Breaking News, Volatility, You May Have Missed |
The U.S. economy added only 20,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department reported this morning. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected 173,000 jobs for the month. In January the economy added 304,000 jobs. The huge swing left economists and Wall Street...