Last Week's Halcyon Unemployment Claims Turn Sour Again

As of this morning, we now know that last week's huge drop in unemployment claims to the lowest levels in 4 years was very clearly an aberration, not a new trend. We know this because this week's unemployment claims leaped back to the trend. And not just to trend, but to the upper end of the trend! Of course, Wall St. is ignoring this news. They are having another Pollyanna Party.

Today's unemployment claims, which this week includes California (last week, the BLS said California didn't report), showed 388,000 new claims. That is closer to the 369,000 from two weeks ago and near the upper trend line that we have been accustomed to over the past several months. Last week's, just for the record, was just 339,000, the lowest level in four years. Of course, it didn't include more than 10% of the population of the U.S.

But as expected, the propaganda media is ignoring this news today. It's just soooo mundane to report the real trend, instead of the dreamily overoptimistic outlier from last week that was no doubt intended to prop up Obama's re-election prospects.

The BLS' explanation THIS week of LAST week's aberration?

"it appeared that state-level administrative issues were distorting the data"

Well duh!