UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS REPORT UNADJUSTED DATA The advance number

[Neubarth]

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS REPORT

UNADJUSTED DATA FOR THE PAST WEEK

The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 521,834 in the week ending Dec. 25, an increase of 24,879 from the previous week. There were 556,517 initial claims in the comparable week in 2009. THE GOVERNMENT, AS USUAL IS LYING LIKE SHEET. Half a million new claims each week, week after week after week after week.
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HALF A MILLION! HALF A MILLION! HALF A MILLION ONWARD.
INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH RODE THE UNWARRIED.

TWAS NOT TO WONDER WHY, BUT TO DO OR DIE.
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the workers knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to work or die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the Unwarried.

ETA Press Release: Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report

 

[pinqy]

I love how Neubarth claims the government is lying by comparing to numbers that he gets from the very same report he claims is lying. I've tried explaining seasonal adjustment to him, I've shown him the graphs that show why seasonal adjustment is used, but he just doesn't get it.

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd `bout give up on ever findin' a job again...

Unemployment Benefits Don’t Impact Job Search
March 21, 2011 — Even as job numbers – and the economy as a whole - have started to improve in recent months, there is little doubt that the country is still in the midst of an unemployment crisis. Nearly 14 million people are unemployed, 6 million of them have been out of work for six months or longer, and many others have given up looking for jobs all together, which means they are no longer counted in the data.

To deal with the ongoing job crisis, Congress extended unemployment benefits on four separate occasions since the recession began, allowing the unemployed to collect benefits for as long as 99 weeks. That may be as far as it goes, for two principal reasons: The more obvious one is that benefits are costly at a time when the government is focused on budget cuts, but at the same time there is the philosophical belief of many legislators and economists that extending these benefits only gives the unemployed an incentive to stay unemployed.

Now, a new study by the Brookings Institution argues that the latter concern may be unjustified, as researchers found that the job hunting habits of the unemployed are not significantly different in periods with unemployment benefits than in periods when their benefits run out. Researchers at Princeton and Stockholm University surveyed more than 6,000 unemployed New Jersey residents on a weekly basis for as long as six months for some individuals, and paired this with state data on unemployment insurance. They determined that the time that out-of-work Americans spent looking for jobs did not increase significantly when their benefits ran out, nor did the likelihood that they would accept a job offer once they stopped receiving their government checks.

Instead, the study’s results point to a long and gradual decline in the effort to find a job driven by stress rather than benefits, which may be even more disturbing. The average time that people spent actively looking for work each day declined by 30 minutes during the first 12 weeks of unemployment, and then remained essentially flat for the weeks that followed, regardless of whether the person was receiving benefits during that time.

The researchers note several subtle factors that may explain this change in job search behavior, including the possibility that unemployed workers feel they’ve exhausted available positions and also that they become more efficient in searching for jobs the longer they are unemployed and therefore spend less time filling out paperwork and sending resumes than newer job-seekers.

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