April 20, 2012
In its top of the hour news segment, Morning Edition told listeners that weekly unemployment claims fell last week (sorry, no link). This is sort of true, since claims were reported at 386,000 compared to 388,000 the prior week.
However the more important news here was that this was the second consecutive week in which claims were above 380,000 after hovering near 360,000 for the last two months. The number from two weeks ago was also revised upward with the release of yesterday’s data from 380,000 to 388,000. Almost every report in the last year has been revised upward the following week.
In this context, the latest release was not good news about the state of the economy.
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