WTF is that supposed to mean? Are these people crazy? YES, IT IS THAT BAD.
Analysts had predicted that jobless claims for last week would fall back to 400,000 or so after rising to 431,000 last week; instead, new claims for unemployment insurance surged to 474,000, the Labor Department reported today.
The new level is the highest claims have been in eight months.
A Department of Labor official told the Wall Street Journal that one-time administrative factors were to blame, rather than underlying economic problems. For example, a new emergency benefit program in Oregon may have triggered an influx of applications.
Meanwhile, the White House economic advisor Austan Goolsbee calls the new numbers a “bump in the road” and cautions we shouldn’t “read too much” into one month’s numbers.
And CEOs are doing better than ever!
There may indeed be an emergency extension here in Oregon (four weeks, not six) but it only available to existing claims and not for the post-99ers who have exhausted their benefits. No one here is opening a new claim for a four week extension.