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"Unexpectedly" right?
"Unexpectedly" right?
Yep just like the GDP is at 1.8 Unexpectedly
I am curious as to why ADP doesn't have a forecast figure for April unemployment. They usually give us a taste like 3-4 days ahead.....
For workers in these areas, the job prospects aren't much better today than they were at the start of the Great Recession. Employment levels hit four-year lows in April in more than a dozen sectors tracked by the Labor Department. Another 10 hit lows in the first three months of the year and have shown little gain since, according to an exclusive CNNMoney analysis. The problems persist even while nearly three out of four other business sectors have been adding jobs over the last six months.
For job seekers with these fields on their résumés, talk of a hiring rebound rings awfully hollow. And economists warn not to expect any quick turnaround in some of these industries. Construction is the biggest hole in the job market. Job losses started there well before the start of the recession in December 2007, but since then, the construction industry shed a staggering 2 million jobs, or 27% of its the pre-recession jobs.
"Construction is just starting to turn, but it's not going to come back fast," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. "And it's not getting back to the levels we saw during the boom anytime in the foreseeable future." The finance and insurance sector also has yet to recover from the damage wrought by the collapse of the housing bubble. Those sectors are down a combined 400,000 jobs since the start of the recession, hitting a new 11-year low in April, or 7% of the jobs in the sector.
Manufacturing of big ticket items has shown a nice rebound as of late, with industries such as automakers bringing back about 20% of the jobs that were shed from the start of the recession to the low point. But manufacturers of nondurable goods -- consumable items like textiles and clothing, chemicals, beverages and tobacco products -- are still at very low employment levels. Overall, those manufacturers lost 600,000 jobs between the start of the recession and January of this year, and have only brought back about 20,000 of those jobs since, even as the fortunes of the businesses themselves have improved.
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Here are the claims numbers that have been out since last Thursday:Jobless claims increased by 25,000 to 429,000 in the week ended April 2...
Sales of homes in some stage of foreclosure declined in the first three months of the year, but they still accounted for 28 percent of all home sales a share nearly six times higher than what it would be in a healthy housing market. Foreclosure sales, which include homes purchased after they received a notice of default or were repossessed by lenders, hit the highest share of overall sales in a year during the first quarter, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. "It's an astronomically high number," said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. "In a normal market, you're looking at the percentage of homes sold in foreclosure to be below 5 percent."
The pace at which homes are entering the foreclosure process has slowed in recent months amid bank and court delays. But distressed properties remain a fixture of a housing market still searching for a sustained recovery. The properties, often in need of repair, typically sell at a discount, weakening prices for other types of homes. As a slice of all home purchases, foreclosure sales peaked two years ago at 37.4 percent. In the first quarter, they rose from 27 percent in prior quarter, but fell from 29 percent a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac. Sales of foreclosure properties didn't fare much better than other types of homes, however.
In all, 158,434 homes in some stage of foreclosure were sold in the first quarter, down 16 percent from the last three months of 2010 and down 36 percent versus a year ago. Sales of all other types of homes also declined sharply, according to RealtyTrac's figures, which differ from other home-sales estimates. While the number of bank-owned properties sold declined, they grew as a share of all home sales. Bank-owned homes accounted for nearly 19 percent of all sales, up from 17 percent in the fourth quarter and up from 18 percent a year ago, the firm said. That's not good news for the housing market.
RealtyTrac estimates there are 872,000 homes that have been repossessed by lenders, but have yet to be sold. At the first-quarter's sales pace, it will take three years to clear the inventory of 1.9 million properties already in some stage of foreclosure. For bank-owned properties alone, that amounts to a 2-year supply. "Clearly, the housing market is not out of the woods," Sharga said. Homebuyers who purchased a bank-owned home in the first quarter saved an average of 35 percent versus the average price of other types of homes, RealtyTrac said. That discount is unchanged from the previous quarter, but up from an average of 33 percent a year ago.
More Foreclosure sales 'astronomically high' in Q1 - Business - Personal finance - Real estate - msnbc.com
