Karl Denninger, “Unemployment Claims: Around The Merry-Go-Round”

“Unemployment Claims: Around The Merry-Go-Round”

by Karl Denninger

“In the week ending Dec. 11, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 420,000, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 423,000. The 4-week moving average was 422,750, a decrease of 5,250 from the previous week's revised average of 428,000. Yeah yeah. Let's look at the table that really matters - the people who are losing (or gaining) extended benefits:

 Click image for larger sizes.

Holy crap!  Now that's a nasty number.  +893,000?!  Uh, wow. And the bad news is where it is showing up - the majority of this is in new claims in the regular state figures.  The roll into EUC continues but that +548 up above says that a huge percentage of the people who claimed in the last few weeks "stuck" - that is, there were no material roll-offs from people finding jobs in the weeks leading up to Black Friday.

Remember folks, claims is a "fuzzy" number.  It tells you who claimed but it doesn't tell you who found jobs.  Well, now we know.  And now we also know where the unemployment stats for November, where we lost an actual 500,000 jobs on the household survey, came from.

Incidentally, about the top line on this post?  There was an interesting exchange right after the report was released on CNBS - I actually heard a tiny bit of recognition that perhaps, just perhaps, all this crap that the government and Fed have been running aren't working - and can't - from the likes of Liesman.  Oh, and yesterday morning there was caught by a few astute watchers what appeared to be a clear reference to my work over here on the same channel at about 6:00 AM.. .of course it's not in the video archive as it was one of those "quip" things between "segments."

But then, right on cue at 8:00, the idiocy returns with "we're seeing a slowly-improving job market." Really Steve?  Improving eh?  Yeah, I know, you mentioned the "slight" (!!!!!) uptick in continuing claims.  Near +900k is slight, with more than a half-million of them showing up in the initial 26 week claim numbers - that is, people who got laid off and couldn't find replacement jobs? Improvement... where? Remember, coming into Black Friday you'd expect seasonal hiring to dramatically improve these numbers. While this was seen on the previous week (good) that evaporated into the week leading up to Black Friday.

Here's a tip for you Steve, Joe and the rest over at CNBS: There was a second Hindenberg yesterday, which means we now have a confirmed "Omen."  When you add everything up, including the Corporate Leverage Index, which incidentally the corporate-owned media also never talks about (that is, exactly what are you buying when you purchase equities at a given valuation?), one wonders exactly what sort of excuse we will get from the corporate media complex if, as I expect, things really go to hell in the near future. Oh, I know, I know... Nobody could have seen it coming. Wrong again boyz.”

- http://market-ticker.org/

Share this post