The market is down on the latest US jobless figures today, despite Germany raising its GDP forecast, the M&A activity with Intel, BHP and others, and so on.
The US figures do make pretty grim reading:
The number of Americans filing new weekly claims for jobless benefits jumped unexpectedly to 500,000, the highest level in nine months, the government said Thursday, threatening recovery hopes.
The claims in the week to August 14 increased by 12,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 488,000 and came well above most economists’ expectations of 475,000.
It was the third straight week in which claims have risen, and underscores the threat posed by unemployment on the recovery from the worst US recession in decades.
It also raised the possibility of authorities taking more stimulus measures to help contain the near double-digit unemployment rate.
It’s hard to find a bright spot in these figures – too many people have been unemployed now in the US for long enough to be pretty sure there will be knock-on consequences to growth. A resumption of the pre-Greek ‘V’ now looks very unlikely.
That said, other surveys are showing hours worked still inching up, and about two million more Americans now have a job than at the end of last year. This all indicates that companies are ratcheting up their labour requirements, having squeezed every last drop out of productivity measures.
Slowly slowly, catchy monkey – though that’ll be little comfort for jobless US workers.
(Source: AFP/Google)
