Jobless Claims in U.S. Rise to 417,000
By Bob Willis - Aug 25, 2011 8:50 AM ET .
Jobless claims climbed by 5,000 to 417,000 in the week ended Aug. 20, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected a drop in claims to 405,000, according to the median forecast. At least 8,500 applications were filed by workers at Verizon last week, compared with 12,500 the prior week, the agency said.
The report signals that excluding the communications dispute, companies are slowing the pace of firings, which may ease concern that consumers will cut back on spending. At the same time, an unemployment rate at 9.1 percent is a reminder that a sustained labor-market rebound has yet to develop two years into the economic recovery.
“The problem over the last 18 months to two years hasn’t been the layoff side,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut.
“The real problem has been we’re not getting the normal pace of hiring” that comes with a recovery. “For all the talk of impending doom in the economy, there is still not a lot of evidence of that.”
Stock-index futures held earlier gains after the report. The contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index maturing in September rose 0.1 percent to 1,173.6 at 8:41 a.m. in New York. Treasury securities climbed, sending the yield on the benchmark 10-year note down to 2.27 percent from 2.30 percent late yesterday.
Bloomberg.com
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