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Unlike economists, I can in no way ever claim to be surprised at all the continuing bad news on the economy (and yeah, I will continue to link to and milk that schtick). Just today, we have the Initial Unemployment Claims report (via CNN):
In the week ended May 28, 422,000 Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits, the Labor Department said Thursday.In case you're wondering, that "revised" figure from last Thursday's Initial Unemployment Claims report was revised upward from 424K. Given how woefully inaccurate the economists' predictions have been, I will go out on a limb as I stated yesterday and predict that the BLS numbers for May will be much lower than 170K. I'm thinking more likely closer to a quarter of that (42.5K) but I do hope that I'm wrong. As far as the "unemployment rate" easing, this article from the AP (via Yahoo) this morning (Thursday June 2) goes a long way to explaining why the "official" unemployment rate may drop. Good way to make the figures look better by not counting those who get frustrated and give-up.
While that marked a 6,000 decrease from the revised 428,000 initial claims filed the week before, it was worse than economists' expectations for 413,000 claims.
...snip...
Next up is the government's monthly jobs report due Friday. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney say they're expecting to see that 170,000 jobs were created in May and that the unemployment rate eased to 8.9% from 9% in April.
