Friday, June 06, 2008

Not Good

The national unemployment rate rose to 5.5 percent in May, from 5.0 percent in April. It was the largest one month rise since February 1986.

MORE:

Like I said--the Dow dropped 396.64 points on the news.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, what effect from a raised minimum wage and young folks looking for work at the end of the school year?

OBloodyHell said...

OK, this makes limited sense.

There appear to be two different Fed organizations posting information, and they're talking at odds. I grasp that they aren't talking about exactly the same thing, but...HUH?

The unemployment rate rose from 5.0 to 5.5 percent in May
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

Contrast with:
The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for unemployment benefits posted a surprising drop last week to a six-week low, signaling some improvement in labor-market conditions ahead of Friday's employment report for May:
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/current.htm

Again, I see very clearly that they are talking about two different things, but
a) Why do we need two different reporting agencies here? The US Federal Full Employment for Statisticians Act of 1932?
b) Which of these sets of numbers is more important? Obviously, the DOW response isn't pretty, but how many saw the first report, about the decline in the last week?