626,000 people filed for unemployment benefits last week. The number of people on unemployment rose to 4.8 million, the highest since records started being kept. [AP]
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Sigh.
Whew, what a relief. Just yesterday, Nancy Pelosi said 500 million were losing their jobs every month. Things are looking up!
Delete the erroneous “verizon math” posts all you want, but they’re still in the RSS feed! We’re onto you!
Oh boy, I sure am glad I’m a recent college grad looking for full-time employment!
@zimzombie: Two Words: Graduate School.
@Thaddeus: Graduate school sucks even harder than regular school.
Its less fun, less interactive, and a lot more work.
@Sean Tapscott: Well, if you’re interested in the field of study (and gods, why wouldn’t you be before signing up), it isn’t all work. Especially if you have a good advisor.
@Sean Tapscott: “Its less fun, less interactive, and a lot more work.”
Making it not unlike working for a living?
First-time claims for state unemployment insurance reached 626,000 in the week ended Jan. 31, up 35,000 from the prior week. And continuing claims, an indication of the difficulty in finding a replacement job, increased to a record 4.79 million, according to the Labor Department.
The claims data come a day before the government’s broader payrolls report for January. Some analysts expect a total of 525,000 jobs to have been shed last month as the unemployment rate climbed to 7.5%.
@Blueskylaw: yet execs keep getting raises and bonuses!
Wow, just wow…
Wow, thanks for that frigging useless statistic guys. How about you give us something useful, like say the PERCENTAGE unemployed which would actually be helpful.
@SarcasticDwarf: The fact that it’s a record is, in itself, significant.
@tc4b: Not really. If in the past 50,000 people was the top number, and the population was 1,000,000 that would b .05 percent. If the population rose to 3,000,000 people, and the number unemployed was 100,000 that would be a new record, but the percentage would be .03 percent, or lower than the first figure.
@PenneAll’Arrabbiata_GitEmSteveDave:
Yup. Math FTW.
@269InchDiagonal_GitEmSteveDave: i didn’t know that you worked for verizon! (you meant 5% and 3.3%)
@Gstein: Damn. Well, to quote Michael Bolton:
Ok! Ok! I must have, I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place
or something. Shit. I always do that. I always mess up some mundane
detail.
@SarcasticDwarf: Percentage unemployed is not so easy to compare, since the government keeps changing the formula they use to define it. Here is a discussion of what the unemployment was three months ago, and how the actual rate is much higher than the number you hear on the news:
[www.ritholtz.com]
Glad I have some marketable skills and some fat government defense contracts.
come onnnn Obama’s New Deal!
I was a little surprised to learn they didn’t start keeping those records until 1967.
thats odd, because nancy pelosi said we lost 500 million.
I thought GWB said “the tax cuts are working?” Perhaps if we cut taxes more, that will cause me to find employment?
I was wise enough to apply for unemployment when Bush was still president. Now someone give me a job. Those online telecommuting scams won’t even hire me. That’s how bad it is.