Wiingers must be besides themselves...
Jobless Claims in U.S. Decrease, Prolonging Seasonal Swings
By Lorraine Woellert - Jan 24, 2013 8:38 AM ET ..
Claims for jobless benefits in the U.S. unexpectedly dropped last week to a five-year low, highlighting the challenges in adjusting the data for swings at the start of a year.
Applications for unemployment insurance payments decreased by 5,000 to 330,000 in the week ended Jan. 19, the fewest since the same week in 2008, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. Economists forecast 355,000 claims, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.
“If you look at the behavior of claims over the last several weeks, they’ve been almost identical to those in 2008 when we had a similar calendar configuration,” Brian Jones, senior U.S. economist at Societe Generale in New York, who projected a drop to 328,000, said before the report.
A pickup in consumer spending last month may be helping employers look beyond the rancor in Washington over attempts to cut federal spending and trim the national debt. Nonetheless, an increase in the payroll tax at the start of the year has shaken household confidence, raising the risk that sales may cool.
“The economy is in fact improving,” Jones said before the report. “The trend in the data is that claims are coming down.”
Stock-index futures held earlier losses after the report. The contract on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index maturing in March fell 0.2 percent to 1,487.2 at 8:31 a.m. in New York after Apple Inc. reported the slowest profit growth since 2003 and weakest sales increase in 14 quarters.
more@Bloomberg.com
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