Improvement Revised Away
Last Thursday, initial jobless claims dipped to a reported 793,000 for the weekending February 6.
Today the BLS reports a revised 848,000 claims with an increase to 861,000 for the week ending February 13.
No Progress Since September 12
On September 12, initial unemployment claims were 866,000. Since then, initial claims meandered from a November 7 low of 711,000 to a high of 927,000 on January 9.
Continued State Unemployment Claims
We have seen slow progress in continued unemployment claims but much of this is masked by people expiring all of their state benefits and falling off the roles onto various federal programs.
The federal numbers are so skewed by fraud, reporting errors, and double counting distortions that I stopped posting them.
Powell Says the True Unemployment Rate is Actually 10%
Fed Chair Jerome Powell says the True Unemployment Rate is Actually 10%.
That is far more believable than the BLS assertion that the unemployment rate is down to 6.3%.
However, Powell went off the deep end regarding one of the alleged cures. Please click on the above link for discussion.
Mish
Hey, we’re not supposed to pay attention to BLS revisions! The whole charade falls apart with this level of scrutiny.
I do hope those people who believed we were in the “greatest economy ever” until the November election start noticing these things again, it would be nice to welcome them back to the realm of sanity.
The news reports “improvements” and tends to ignore revisions.
Very useful for misleading the public, which is the purpose of the whole dog-and-pony show, no doubt.
It’s enough to make you cynical about the BLS in general.
I’ve kept saying States processing and reporting is behind like never before. Keep looking for continued downward revisions.