Diane Alter – AHN News Reporter
Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – First-time claims for unemployment benefits last week remained at levels not seen since 2008.
On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that 351,000 people filed for initial jobless benefits in the week ending Feb. 25, down from the prior week’s revised 353,000 claims.
About 3.4 million people filed for their second week of benefits or more in the week ending Feb. 18, the most recent data showed.
Jobless claims are considered a key indicator of the job market’s strength, and since the number can be volatile week to week, economists often look at the four-week moving average as a better gauge of the overall job market.
That figure has been in a gradual decline of late. Last week it fell to 354,000, down from the previous week’s average of 359,500. That is the lowest average since March 2008.
The Labor Department announced in early February that the unemployment rate had dipped to 8.3 percent. While an improvement, it remains far from a level that signals a healthy job market environment.
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4 December 2011 - by admin
Linda Young – AHN News Writer
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Employers added 120,000 jobs, the nation’s official unemployment rate dropped to 8.6 percent and the percentage of working-age Americans with a job dropped to 64 percent during November, the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Friday.
The drop in the unemployment rate was a combination of some people getting jobs while other long-term unemployed people gave up looking and were no longer counted as unemployed.
The 120,000 jobs were the bare minimum needed to keep up with growth in the labor force because from 120,000 to 200,000 people enter the labor force for the first time in their lives each month. That number of jobs is not sufficient to begin putting a dent in the millions of jobs that were either lost or not created during the recession.
Still, the official 8.6 percent unemployment rate was a drop of 0.4 percentage points from the 9.0 percent unemployment in October, while the 64 percent labor force participation rate was a 0.2 percentage point drop from the 64.2 percent of working-age Americans who were employed in October.
Among various groups, the unemployment rate was:
- adult men 8.3 percent
- whites 7.6 percent
- adult women 7.8 percent
- teenagers 23.7 percent
- blacks 15.5 percent
- Hispanics 11.4 percent
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Though the May Department of Labor jobs report showed an anemic 54,000 new jobs and an unemployment rate now 9.1 percent, the prospect for new college graduates about to enter the work force may be better than it was over the last few years.
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Let’s face it, being unemployed stinks. If you are unemployed, it doesn’t matter if the gradually descending unemployment rate indicates signs of economic recovery.
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Japan’s unemployment rate in April rose for the first time in six months, while the nation’s factory output rebounded.
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Bulgaria’s Minister of Social Policy and Labor, Totyu Mladenov, firmly rejected data released Wednesday by the National Statistics Institute, NSI, listing unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2011 at 12%. The Minister says the rate by the end of May will fall below 9% for the first time in the last several months, stressing the true data comes for the Employment Agency. In January, the rate was 9….
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Local elections in Spain overwhelmingly favored the right wing political party, Partido Popular.
The elections came amidst intense nationwide organizing by grassroots protestors known as the “indignados” or – the outraged.
These members of the “indignados” movement read aloud a manifesto detailing their reasons for camping out in public plazas across Spain. Among their list of grievances is that (quote) “the political class lives in a distant reality from the citizenry and through its economic power, it controls the system of governance”
Spain has been reeling from economic woes that led to severe austerity cuts. The official unemployment rate is over 20 percent.
As election results came in, protestors in Madrid’s Plaza del Sol chanted “they don’t represent us.” They plan to remain camped out in the plaza for at least another week.
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Alabama’s unemployment rate rose slightly to 9.3 percent for April, but that does not include any impact from the deadly tornadoes.
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The Prime Minister is meeting investors from different sectors who are interested in renewing their investment in Malta or staring a new one, Lawrence Gonzi said this morning. Speaking during an activity at the party club in Marsa, Dr Gonzi said that the proposed investment was in manufacturing and the financial and IT sectors and the jobs that would be created would be available to the Maltese, especially those who kept investing in their training. The Prime Minister said that Malta was progressing and even the European Commission was acknowledging this in its prevision report for the country. Malta had the fourth lowest unemployment rate in the EU and the government’s decisions had led to the creation of more jobs in the private sector. He hoped that the aims which had been put forward for Malta would be reached. Dr Gonzi acknowledged that there were people who were suffering but said it was better for all sectors to share the burden than for just one sector to have suffered. The Prime Minister also spoke on divorce and urged for marriage to be kept permanent and not transformed in a four-year one. Families, he said,…
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The shopping mall developer questions the intellectual firepower of City Council leaders and takes on potential mayoral contenders in a blistering speech before the group Town Hall Los Angeles. Los Angeles shopping mall developer Rick Caruso questioned the intellectual firepower of City Council leaders Thursday in a blistering speech that could be his prelude to a run for mayor. He called the city’s 13.4% unemployment rate “embarrassing” and argued that firms have fled town because of onerous regulations and taxes.
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