http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/d/don-ho/album-tiny-bubbles.jpg

Senate Unveils Bill to Boost Jobs, But Who Does it Help?

by David Lightman and Kevin G. Hall

WASHINGTON - The Senate jobs-creation package that was unveiled Thursday and hailed by President Barack Obama may do more to help politicians who want to be seen trying to help the economy than it does to shrink the nation's unemployment rate.

"This is intended to show government is doing something, but it's hard for me to believe (that) a lot of this stuff is going to have a big impact on job creation," said Robert Bixby, the executive director of the Concord Coalition, a fiscal watchdog group.

The measure also faces rough political terrain. Prodded by some Senate Democrats' concerns, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada plans to hold votes on only a small part of the package by month's end. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed a more extensive package in December.

Reid pared down the original $85 billion blueprint that was unveiled Thursday by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and the panel's top Republican, Charles Grassley of Iowa, because of Democratic concerns that it includes items that aren't directly related to job creation but are eagerly sought by business and physicians' groups.

Reid said he wanted to move ahead on the most explicit job-creating parts because, "We feel that the American people need a message. The message they need is we're doing something about jobs."

The plan has four major job-creating components:

* Taxpayers would be allowed to write off up to $250,000 of certain capital expenditures this year, instead of depreciating those costs over time. This could help small businesses grow by letting them write off equipment purchases and would cost the Treasury $35 million over 10 years.
* Employers who hired workers who've been unemployed for at least 60 days this year wouldn't have to pay Social Security taxes, or 6.2 percent of wages up to $106,800, on those new workers for a year. Employers also could get an extra $1,000 tax credit for every new worker they retain for a year. This would cost an estimated $13 billion over 10 years.
* Spending on highway and transit projects would be accelerated by $19.5 billion this year.
* State and local governments would be able to issue indefinitely "Build America Bonds," which get federal aid. The program had been set to expire soon but would be extended at a cost of $2 billion over 10 years.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president was "gratified to see the Senate moving forward in a bipartisan manner on steps to help put Americans back to work."

Will the Senate effort create jobs? Experts say it would help some, but isn't a magic bullet.

"You can't force companies to create jobs if they don't need them," said John Challenger, the president of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a group that specializes in work force issues.

"I think it's more about creating demand, getting the economy going, and that does create jobs," he said. "I think the ones that are effective are things like changing depreciation so companies can write off equipment purchases more quickly."

Earlier this month, the National Federation of Independent Business issued its February survey of members, with a strong message that hiring can't happen without customers and consumer demand.

In an interview Thursday, William Dunkelburg, the group's chief economist, said the federation has advocated since January 2009 a payroll tax holiday that would put more money in the hands of consumers, who drive 70 percent of U.S. economic activity. A tax holiday would also leave businesses with more cash to invest in equipment and technology.

Although many Americans are frustrated by the deepest recession since the Great Depression and the government's response to it, economists think last year's federal stimulus act helped save many public sector jobs at the state and local levels, which helped things from being even worse.

The U.S. unemployment rate peaked at 10.2 percent in October, and fell to 9.7 percent in January. It's expected to rise throughout the year as workers who quit looking for jobs resume looking for them. In a report released Thursday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers projected an jobless rate of 9.8 percent late this year and average monthly net job creation of 95,000.

That's slightly less than the 100,000 new jobs a month that are needed to keep pace with new entrants to the workforce - not counting the more than 8.4 million Americans who've lost their jobs since the recession began in December 2007.

Other proposals in the Baucus-Grassley plan stir more controversy and won't be part of the initial jobs component. They include renewing the estate tax, which expired on Dec. 31 but will be back next year at pre-2001 rates.

The Senate also may tackle extensions of several tax credits, as well as a proposed 21 percent cut in Medicare payments to physicians, and extending intelligence-gathering parts of the USA Patriot Act for another year.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/12-0

http://www.bendib.com/newones/2009/march/small/3-2-Shovel-ready.jpg

How many folks (even Liberals) are going to fall for these blow-jobs bills? I am telling everyone who will listen about Anax's idea of just putting everyone on the Fed payroll - it would solve the problems and be cheaper and would actually stimulate the economy. I get much more agreement than not (I don't know how deep that agreement is, but it's there). And now this shit being spewed out of "our" democratic government? Fucking bust a gut...

:roflmao:

All these billions of dollars for naught, man, it's ridiculous.

My second thought was that it seems clear to me instinctively and from some analysis that I've seen that the result of all this 'economic downturn' (crisis, whatever) is that folks will be spending less and saving more for some time to come (think 'depression generation')..most companies aren't going to try to 'grow' much anytime soon if only to protect their own asses, this bill is a load of shit. There is nothing to indicate that there will be any substantial improvement in employment (even crappy jobs) from this bill.

It ain't gonna be the way it was 10 years ago. Ever again. It's not possible. (and I don't mean to imply that it was 'good' 10 yrs ago for workers - but it was better for the companies that relied on consumers spending loads of money on credit and so forth)

The Democrats are the piss that "sets" the cloth

The Romans built dye shops with vats outside that served as free public toilets. Not only did they act as your basic "rest area" for passersby, but the urine was used to "set" cloth that had been recently dyed - the same way that vinegar is sometimes used today with natural dyes.

So too the Democratic Party. Since FDR, the move of the Democratic Party toward Social Democracy was stillborn; a casualty of McCarthyism which was as much a Democratic Party invention as it was anyone else's. The old coalition, such as it was, essentially fell apart under Kennedy and LBJ. Since Nixon, the "modern" form of the two party system has emerged.

Each Republican president dyes the political fabric a deeper shade of reactionary brown, and each succeeding Democratic president pisses on the new shade to set the color. Thus with Carter, Clinton, and now, Obama.

All of it is maintained through the ambiguity of middle-classdom and the rest, but people can be forgiven for thinking that the shirts are increasingly brown, all talk not withstanding, and that the whole scheme reeks of piss.

Of course the Romans used various scents to mask the process. Our assholes call it the smell of success and don't even bother with perfumes.

__________________________________

There is an economic depression in the United States and there is a shortfall of twenty million jobs. To address that there is a TARP of roughly a trillion bucks, a stimulus of roughly a trillion bucks, a budget deficit of roughly a trillion bucks, and cash outlays from the Fed, FDIC and others that amount to another three trillion bucks... that is all in a year... and at the end of that, there are still gonna be twenty million to twenty five million people without a job.

Yet, any twelve year old can fix the problem. How? Give twenty million people jobs. Do it tomorrow and figure out later what they will do. Pay them $50,000 a year and that is only 1 trillion dollars total. Problem solved.

But wait, those are "fake jobs". What about "real jobs"?

Well, stimulus jobs are "fake jobs" too. But, don't make them fake jobs. Make them real jobs. Let those twenty million make stuff... food and trains and paintings and mocha lattes. So what if they don't make a profit. Subsidize it. The whole thing is subsidized now.

But those twenty million have no capital. Where do we get the means to make stuff?

Confiscate it. Start by taking the idle mills, mines, land that produces nothing today. If ya wanna be "moderate", give the "owners" a few bucks in "rent". It's better than what they get today. And have the banks lend the rest.

But the banks won't lend to such "unprofitable enterprises". How do we get them to finance it?

We take the banks too. The state has already paid for them twice over.

But, but, but... $50,000 a year is too much. That is close to the median income. If you hire twenty million people another 40 million will quit to take the new jobs. What do you do then?

Hire the 40 million. Let them make or do what they were doing before.... or maybe let them do something better. Let people get their own damn Whopper if they gotta have it.

But, that will be inefficient, won't it?

In fact it is a matter of degrees. Too inefficient to survive in the private market? Maybe. More inefficient than wiping out all of American economic growth since the mid 1970s in one big depression? Not a chance.

But, that's all pie in the sky. The major political parties will never go for that and the people with money will never allow it.

Well then, we've identified the actual political problem, haven't we?

- anax

"Piss and Vinegar" don't it? Heh...

Was going to post this on its own, but anyway:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24665.htm



Which Way to the Bastille?

By David Glenn Cox

February 12, 2010 "Information Clearing House" - -Who do we throw our shoes at now? Does Wal-Mart have everyday low low prices on torches and pitchforks? Made in China of course, but the question is a serious one, what are we going to do, in this country, about a government that refuses to acknowledge our distress?

Yesterday I read that there are almost 20,000 homeless teenagers in New York City alone, so how many is that nationwide? Colorado Springs is turning off streetlights and sold their police helicopter and fired the pilot and mechanic. The default rate on jumbo mortgages is near 10%. Jumbo mortgages are at least $250,000 and ranged up to $729,750 but the stimulus bill reduced it to a paltry $625,500. Big fish with big loans and they’re going belly up just like the rest of us.

These economic hard times are not isolated; they are widespread and growing daily. Financial experts have said, "Thank God for the census hiring thousands." Except census takers count households and we have millions that have no house to hold. Asking them if they have a high speed Internet connection or how many toilets they have misses the mark at this point. At this point the questions should be: are you getting enough to eat? Are your children attending school; do you have money to wash your clothes?

They don’t ask us and won’t ask us because they won’t like the answers, so it’s best to just ignore us. The President, in his State of the Union Address, announced a new jobs bill. Oh goody! More god-damned tax cuts that made the last stimulus so successful. Let me ask you, if I offered a 50% tax cut on the purchase of a new Ferrari or Rolls Royce, would you buy one? You won’t buy what you can’t afford no matter how big the tax break. Employers won’t hire workers to drive a truck if they don’t have orders to deliver, even with a tax cut.

Politicians love playing games with numbers. Obama can say, "My jobs program has 10 gazillion dollars in job incentives," but they are all tax credits that might help 1% who were probably going to hire anyway. So what have we gained? We gain nothing except that the politician can smile and wave from the lectern. He’s free and indemnified when his critics ask, "What are you doing about unemployment?" He can answer with pointed finger, "Why, my administration is spending gazillions to fight unemployment. Haven’t you seen my jobs program?" But, but, but, if employers can’t take advantage of the tax cuts then you’ve spent nothing, and even worse you’ve done nothing.

The new jobs bill is the vehicle the administration plans to use to reauthorize the Patriot Act. With a heart of stone and eyes of lead, they are throwing lifejackets lined with fishhooks to the desperate. It is beyond cynical; it’s shameful and disgraceful. I have a finger between my index and ring finger that says all that needs to be said about that. Except perhaps that this bill is just more politics when our people are suffering, and politics should be put aside.

Don’t you dare say, "I would but... the Republicans." Maybe if you’d punch a few of those Republicans in their political nose and start playing hardball instead of trying to hold encounter group sessions to try and get in touch with their feelings you might begin to gain traction. But you don’t fool me, pal. You’re the guy that’s leaning and grunting, but you ain’t pushing the car. You’re only pretending to push the car.

Untangling the unemployment numbers is like untangling canned spaghetti. It's a mish-mash in tomato sauce with attempt to defraud. First-time claims down by 43,000. There is a saturation point, isn’t there? A sponge will only hold so much water; you can’t expect it will suddenly hold 10% or 20% more. So you have an economy that is enfeebled like a geriatric pie crust. There are no new great mass layoffs because there is no one left with huge numbers of employees to lay off.

"Labor Department figures showed today in Washington... The total number of people getting unemployment insurance and those receiving extended benefits decreased." Because they are no longer unemployed? Or because they have exhausted their available benefits? They don’t say because they don’t care; that information doesn’t fit their agenda.

"The Obama administration today projected payrolls will grow by 95,000 a month on average this year, indicating it will take a long time to recover the 8.4 million jobs lost since the recession began."

Well, considering there are 150,000 more employees each month entering the workforce, I’d speculate that date to be somewhere around the twelfth of never. Yet these high-paid, over-educated economists always seem to forget us or to bury us in the footnotes. It makes for great headlines and the President can claim that his little-or-nothing jobs program is working.

You reach a point where you’ve just heard enough and you just don’t want to hear one more word from one more politician. I’m angry enough, thank you, I no longer need your services.

"Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) – President Barack Obama said he and his administration have pursued a 'fundamentally business-friendly' agenda and are 'fierce advocates' for the free market, rejecting corporate criticism of his policies."

"Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- A majority of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index increased cash to a combined $1.18 trillion while simultaneously reducing spending, keeping a jobs recovery on hold."

"Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. foreclosure filings rose 15 percent in January from a year earlier and exceeded 300,000 for the 11th consecutive month as modification programs failed to keep delinquent borrowers in their homes."

"Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said he is 'agnostic' about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the Budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare."

You S.O.B! Two phony wars, a trillion dollar defense budget, and your answer is to cut Social Security and Medicare? But you’re "agnostic" on raising taxes on individuals earning just a smidge less than a quarter million a year.

We are living in a toxic economy with millions who have spent their retirement incomes that will have no chance to recover. Tens of millions who have lost their jobs and ruined their credit, who will never be able to buy another home or new car because of it. Millions of children growing up in cold rooms on bad diets with no health care. A lost generation of children moving from apartment to apartment until they get old enough to just run off and begin their own cycle of poverty and rage.

Why shouldn’t they smoke dope and sell crack? Is the magic college fairy going to come down from heaven and wave her magic wand to save them?

"Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall. (Bob Dylan)

Which way to the Bastille?

Next step is brainstorming...what we're doing?

Oh, brilliant stuff...

I understood it all too...

http://uk.techcrunch.com/wp-content/nero-2.jpg

Rising FHA Default Rate Foreshadows a Crush of Foreclosures
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/01/AR2010020103527.html


The share of borrowers who are falling seriously behind on loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration jumped by more than a third in the past year, foreshadowing a crush of foreclosures that could further buffet an agency vital to the housing market's recovery.

About 9.1 percent of FHA borrowers had missed at least three payments as of December, up from 6.5 percent a year ago, the agency's figures show.


The FHA does not make loans but insures lenders against losses. And claims have already spiked. The agency had to pay out on 47 percent more loans in October and November than in the corresponding period a year earlier, according to an FHA report.

The number of loans in foreclosure, including those that have not yet been billed to the agency, has also increased. They were up 26 percent in the last quarter from a year earlier.


For all these reasons, the FHA projects that it will pay out claims to lenders on one out of every four loans made in 2007 -- the worst rate in at least three decades. The claim rate should be nearly the same on the vastly larger volume of loans made in 2008.


The audit, released in November, found that the cash the FHA set aside to pay for unexpected losses had dipped to historic lows, well below the level required by law. As of Sept. 30, those reserves were estimated at $3.6 billion, down from nearly $13 billion a year earlier. The most recent figure represents 0.53 percent of the value of all FHA single-family-home loans -- far lower than the 2 percent required by Congress.

But Ann Schnare, a former Freddie Mac official, said the situation could be even worse. She said the audit underestimates future losses because it does not take into account all loans that are now overdue, only those that the FHA has paid claims on.


There are now between 20 and 25 million vacant homes in America...

and buildings fall down from lack of use while kids sleep in the streets...

It is the American way. Can we go in another direction, now, please? Oh, and fuck "Please"...

as this jobs bill is gonna be.

I knew nothing about the Making Home Affordable program. I started to go through the process to refinance my home a few months ago to lower my interest rate. Not because I was unable to make payments or was late making them, not because I was in danger of losing my house, but simply to save a hundred bucks a month because my rate was so crappy before.

Little did I know I was receiving the benefits of this program. What good did it do me? I'm not really sure. Maybe my rate being slightly lower? Maybe less fuss about the loan/equity ratio? But thanks to Obama, I have gotten to keep the house I live in. Which I would have kept anyway. My credit is great, my finances are in order (yes I am a lucky bitch), I didn't need his help.

Way to help people who need it the most, Obama!

"Middle Class" not the "real" middle class (it is fairly small), but at that group who think of themselves as "Middle Class". Now those who "think" but aren't are fucked, but hopefully they will "feel" good about Obama and the Democrat fucks. It makes no difference whether these deluded folks actually get help; it only matters if they "think" or "believe" they are. And the Poor and Working Class? They can go get fucked as far as any political party is concerned. Why? They are not seen as a viable "bloc"... This is just disgusting on every level.

The Obama team rolled out a bunch of new initiatives this week. None of them are about jobs or houses or healthcare. They are about how the administration is seen to be in charge of the situation: "We have have to regain control of the message...", "We have to enforce message discipline", "The president has to wrestle mindshare away from Congress", and so on.

They openly talk about their internal scheming and politicking... they are openly interviewed about nothing else by the press, playing the role of sophisticated "insiders"... and, across town, the Republicans assemble their counter-messaging.

The whole thing is surreal: there is reality and then there is "how we choose to see" reality. And, the marketing message is the far more important one... as if solving the slogan instantly guaranteed a physical solution.

If only we could eliminate our fear of water, no one need drown ever again...

You'd have to be in the market for a new car, and be able to afford a new car, to take advantage of that program. Basically people who were already going to buy a new car did it sooner, or did it fancier.

People who need a car to get to the three jobs they work and get their kids to and from day care without wasting hours everyday are still stuck with shitty underfunded public transit.

It's all crap.

they just say, "Yeah, that's true." Most folks who claim "middle class status" (whatever the hell that is) are mostly ready to admit that it is a sham...what to say next?

We gone around some kind of curve here, they've met Orwell's bet and thrown Kafka in the pot.

It makes me more nervous than their standard duplicity.

Everybody's gonna be cooked when they think its a nice swim...

After 4 million jobs lost, White House declares stimulus a success
By Jerry White
18 February 2010

Confronting growing discontent over his administration’s failure to provide serious relief to some 15 million jobless workers in the US, President Obama on Wednesday proclaimed the success of the stimulus package, enacted a year ago, and declared, “The American people are rebuilding a better future.”

The president claimed the measure had created or saved 2 million jobs and castigated Republicans for opposing the bill, which he said had helped avert a second Great Depression.

In an empty gesture, Obama acknowledged that not everyone was enjoying the economic rebound celebrated by the banks and stock markets. Despite the “extraordinary work that has been done through the Recovery Act,” he said, “millions of Americans are still without jobs, millions more are struggling to make ends meet, so it doesn’t feel like much of a recovery yet, I understand that.”

In fact, the official unemployment rate continues to hover around 10 percent, with the real rate—including all those forced to work part-time or who have given up looking for non-existent jobs—nearly twice as high. Since the recession began, some 8 million jobs have been destroyed, including nearly 4 million since the passage of the stimulus package last February.

Even with its unrealistic projections of economic growth, the White House anticipates mass unemployment to continue for years, with only minor decreases from the current rate of nearly 10 percent through 2012. According to a report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers released last week, the official unemployment rate is not expected to fall below 6 percent until 2015, and will remain above 5 percent through 2020.

The stimulus package was never aimed at seriously addressing mass unemployment that can only be alleviated through massive government hiring, a measure that the administration has rejected out of hand. Instead, the administration, acting on behalf of the most powerful corporate and financial interests, has welcomed unemployment as a hammer to drive down the wages and benefits of workers—as it did to auto workers at GM and Chrysler—and sharply increase the rate of exploitation of the working class.

The $787 billion bill—formally known as the Recovery and Reinvestment Act—has done little to provide relief to the jobless or to prevent states and municipalities from slashing jobs and services in response to their burgeoning budget deficits.

More than a third of the bill was for so-called “middle class” tax breaks, which were supposedly aimed at helping hard-pressed families meet their living expenses. This $115 billion in tax credits for those earning under $90,000 has added a mere $7.70 to an average worker’s weekly paycheck.

Just under a third of the stimulus spending was for state governments and to extend unemployment benefits, food stamps and so-called COBRA benefits, which enable unemployed workers to maintain their previous employer’s health care coverage through large out-of-pocket expenses.

However, dozens of states, including California, New York and Michigan, have instituted payless holidays, wage and benefit cuts and public sector layoffs. In January alone, 40,000 local and state government jobs were eliminated.

An article on stateline.org, a web site that monitors state government issues, noted that several states were withholding aid to cities, counties and school districts in order to balance their own books, leading to draconian cuts in education, child health care, senior and recreation centers and other services. “For the last three recession cycles, it’s been common for states to reduce financial support for local governments during the recession, and once they come out of it, they restore most of what they’ve cut,” said Michael Pagano, dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois-Chicago. “Now local officials are wondering whether that money will ever come back.”

The few stimulus funds made available for education have been conditioned on school districts increasing the number of charter schools and implementing merit pay and punitive “performance-based” schemes being pushed by the administration. In a summary of the results of the stimulus package, Vice President Joe Biden’s office noted, “Recovery Act funds have laid the groundwork for needed reforms that will improve our schools.” Twelve states have already passed legislation to accept the administration’s reactionary criteria to qualify for the $4.35 billion Race to the Top competition.

The remaining money was for “projects”—which at the time were billed as the greatest expansion of public works since the New Deal. It has been nothing of the sort. According to Biden’s report, some money has been used for highway repair and transportation projects, including high-speed rail schemes not scheduled to be completed until the 2020s. In addition, the departments of Defense and Homeland Security have used money for military base and airport security upgrades.

A large portion, however, has been used to fund direct subsidies and loan guarantees to private employers, including utility companies and manufacturers, involved in such things as medical information technology, electricity supply and so-called clean energy projects. There is little doubt large sums have found their way into the hands of the politically connected.

From the beginning, the $27.5 billion allocated for bridge and highway repair was a drop in the bucket compared to the sums needed to deal with America’s crumbling physical and social infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers has determined the US needs a $2.2 trillion five-year investment, just to bring the country’s infrastructure up to date. The group gave the US a “D” on its 2009 report card on infrastructure, and noted, “We are still driving on Eisenhower's roads and sending our kids to Roosevelt's schools.”

The administration has rejected out of hand the only measure that could substantially increase employment and improve infrastructure, i.e., a massive public works program.

As the New York Times noted Tuesday, suggestions by some liberal economists that the Obama administration “spend money directly to create jobs, much as it did during the New Deal” had “gained little traction in Washington.” In fact, the president and his leading advisors have repeatedly rejected the idea, insisting that the private sector is the only creator of jobs that produce long-term value.

In other words, government policy and funding is to be directed only to increase the profits of big business. In this regard, a portion of the stimulus package has been used to pay private employers to hire people. The program, being used in 21 states, has no lasting benefit for the public, but instead allows employers to profit from the labor of workers, virtually cost-free.

According to a report in the Times Tuesday, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, California and several other states are participating. Under the “Steps program” in Mississippi, “employers will be reimbursed for each new worker’s full salary for the first two months of work, and then the monthly reimbursement will be scaled back gradually until it drops to just a quarter of the salary in the sixth month. After that, the employer must pay the full salary.”

The newspaper continued, “Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, one of the nation’s most prominent Republicans, said he saw the state’s program as being in the spirit of the welfare overhaul. ‘It’s welfare to work,’ he said.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/stim-f18.shtml

Jobless claims rise unexpectedly
By Hibah Yousuf, staff reporterFebruary 18, 2010: 9:47 AM ET


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance climbed unexpectedly last week.

There were 473,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended Feb. 13, up 31,000 from the previous week's upwardly revised 442,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday.


A consensus estimate of economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected claims to slide to 438,000.

The 4-week moving average of initial claims, which levels out volatility, was 467,000, down 1,500 from the previous week's revised average of 469,000.

"We may have had some weather effects," said Wells Fargo senior economist Mark Vitner, adding that the blizzards that battered the East Coast at the end of the previous week may have led people to delay filing unemployment claims to last week.

The 4-week moving average, he said, is a more accurate measure of where jobless claims currently stand.

"We're better than we were a few months ago, but I think the labor market is not improving as rapidly as we had hoped," Vitner said.

The Labor Department said employers shed a modest 20,000 jobs in January -- an improvement from the 150,000 that were lost in December -- and that the unemployment rate fell to 9.7%.

Economists expect businesses to add 10,000 jobs in February, but project the unemployment rate will rise to 9.8%. Vitner, on the other hand, doesn't expect nonfarm payrolls to move into positive territory until late spring.

Continuing claims: The number of people filing continuing claims in the week ended Feb. 6 was unchanged from the previous week's revised 4,563,000 claims.

Economists were expecting continuing claims to fall to 4,500,000.

Continuing claims reflect people filing each week after their initial benefit week until the end of their standard benefits, which usually last 26 weeks. The figures do not include those who have moved into state or federal extensions, or people whose benefits have expired.

The 4-week moving average for ongoing claims fell by 24,000 to 4,585,750 from the previous week's revised 4,609,750.

The slide may be signaling that more filers are dropping off those rolls into extended benefits.

State-by-state: Jobless claims in seven states declined by more than 1,000 in the week ended Feb. 6, the most recent state data available. Claims in California dropped the most, by 13,535, which the state attributed to fewer layoffs in the construction industry.

Claims rose by more than 1,000 in four states, increasing the most in Iowa. Filings rose there by 2,014 due to more layoffs in the construction industry, according to the state.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/18/news/economy/initial_claims/index.htm