Unemployment Benefits Claimed by 4.09 Million Americans, Most in 26 Years

[marmar]

Jobless-Benefit Rolls in U.S. Climb to 26-Year High (Update1)
By Shobhana Chandra and Bob Willis


Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- More Americans are collecting jobless benefits than at any time in the last 26 years, a sign the labor market is weakening as the recession worsens.

A larger-than-anticipated 4.09 million fired workers received government unemployment checks in the week ended Nov. 22, the most since December 1982, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Initial jobless claims declined by 21,000 to 509,000 in the week that ended Nov. 29, which included the Thanksgiving Day holiday.

Factories, banks and retailers may step up firings as sales weaken, prompting even bigger declines in consumer spending and pushing the U.S. into what may become the longest recession in the postwar era. A Labor report tomorrow may show job losses swelled in November to the highest level in a quarter century and the unemployment rate climbed.

“Businesses are battening down the hatches,” Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc. in Pittsburgh, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “Job losses are going to continue to accelerate.”

Stock-index futures and Treasury yields were lower. The benchmark 10-year note yielded 2.63 percent at 8:44 a.m. in New York, down 3 basis points from yesterday.

Continuing claims were projected to rise to 4.03 million, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Labor revised total benefit rolls for the prior week up to 3.998 million from 3.962 million.

Initial claims last week were lower than the 540,000 median estimate of economists surveyed. The government often has difficulty adjusting the figures for seasonal influences during holidays.

The four-week moving average of initial claims, a less volatile measure, climbed to 524,500, the highest since 1982, from 518,250, today’s report showed. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a3UvRC6IA.58&refer=home

[saltpoint]

1. Well there ya go. And the damn libruls thought Dubya's tax cuts wouldn't work.

[glowing]

2. Perhaps if those people kept their jobs, the employer wouldn't be in

such economic condition.. but they knew best in paying people less and less while everything else went up and up.

[LiberalEsto]

3. Sigh. I wish I could collect.

I'll tell you this, the unemployment situation in this country is a LOT worse than the numbers show.

Technically I have a job, but haven't worked since October. There's been so few assignments that I've scarcely earned anything all year. I'm a part time marketing writer, and do a little freelancing when and if I find any.

There are lots of people like me with part time, marginal jobs that are barely getting by (Fortunately my DH is employed). We don't qualify for unemployment benefits. Others have exhausted theirs. We don't show up on the statistics.

[marmar]

5. Yeah, I write ad copy and do a little travel/feature freelancing on the side....

..... It's ice cold right now. :scared:

[LiberalEsto]

8. And there are no newspaper reporter jobs any more

I worked as a reporter for more than 25 years. Five of the six papers I worked for have gone out of business. And the sixth just forced 40% of its employees to take buyouts or else the paper would have been sold.

I'm just about as obsolete as a manual typewriter.

[City Lights]

4. Whatever you do, don't blame poor george!

None of this is his fault. He's just the poor victim of policies put in place by his daddy!

:sarcasm:

Welcome to the United States of FUBAR, courtesy of George Wanker Bush.

[unpossibles]

6. ah, and so many of my conservative friends like to claim otherwise

Frankly, I think it's worse that that. Having been unemployed, I know that joblessness often can outlast benefits, and that even working after they run out often takes the form of "any job I can get" not necessarily one which pays well in your field.

[gratuitous]

7. Will anyone ask Commander Bunnypants about this?

As George Dubya takes his victory lap around the networks who fluffed him so faithfully for the last eight years, do you think anyone will have the bad taste to ask him about this? Of course, since everyone who would be in the room has a job, it's probably not something that the Immaculate Coifs worry their pretty little heads about.