The number of new jobless claims dropped for the first time in a while. The last six months have been somewhat dismal for employment, though temporary boosts were provided by seasonal employment around the holidays and the United States census. The housing market is still in the basement; nevertheless some good news about employment is a welcome change. However, the news is a nearly Pyrrhic victory, as unemployment has held somewhat steadily since November of 2009. The news got stock markets to climb ever so slightly.
New jobless cases decrease slightly
A drop was recorded within the amount of new claims for unemployment benefits by the Department of Labor. Seasonally adjusted, there were 473,000 unemployed cases. However, that number is down by 31,000 over the last week. The past four weeks, according to Forbes, average out to jobless claims of 486,750, which are the highest since November 2009. One must take lower winter unemployment with a grain of salt, though. Winter provides some seasonal employment for retail. There was also the U.S. census, which temporarily employed a lot of people.
Stock exchange offered a lift
As outlined by the Wall Street Journal, the news did some immediate good. It gave stock markets a very modest rise. The boost wasn’t much to boast of though. The biggest gain was .3 percent for Standard and Poor’s. Nasdaq climbed a staggering .2 percent. The Dow Jones needs to put Prozac in the drinking fountains, as the Dow only climbed .1 percent. The big news on Wall Street is really the Dell acquisition, though others are trying to stop it, of data storage company 3Par. There’s a big bidding war going on, and it is even bigger news than the Potash saga. Hewlett Packard and Dell are fighting it out for 3Par, and it’s causing a huge firestorm of coverage.
The advance is slight
The data released just means a small fall in unemployment claims. Fewer employers are at the moment hiring. Real estate shows few signs of life, and it is believed that up to 10 percent of all homeowners may have foreclosure as a significant possibility in their future.
Further reading
Forbes
forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/08/26/real-estate-industrials-us-economy_7879865.html
Wall Street Journal
online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100826-709681.html
