Et tu, Microsoft? Company announces 1,000 job cuts
On Monday, October 17, Microsoft (MSFT) confirmed that it had laid off nearly 1,000 employees across multiple divisions, including Xbox division staff this week.
Another crack in the jobs market
Job openings in the United States fell in June to a nine-month low. The number of available positions decreased to 10.7 million in the month from an upwardly revised 11.3 million in May, the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed Tuesday. The 605,000 decline was the biggest since April 2020. I’m sure this data has caught the Federal Reserve’s eye.
Initial claims for unemployment drop again
New claims for unemployment in regular state programs well for the week ended October 30 to a seasonally adjusted 269,000.
Initial claims for unemployment fall by more than forecast for the week
New claims for unemployment dropped to 712,000 in regular state programs in the week ended March 6, the Labor Department reported today. That drop of 42,000 from the prior week was a bigger drop than economists had projected. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg were looking for 725,000 new claims in regular state programs.
CBO says U.S. unemployment rate won’t return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024
Granted this is just a projection, and that nobody really knows what the economy will look like over the next three years, but it’s still depressing news. The nonpartisan–although frequently reviled by the Trump administration–Congressional Budget Office projects that the U.S. unemployment rate won’t fall to pre-pandemic levels until 2024. The office says that the unemployment rate will fall to a still elevated 5.7% in 2021, to 5$ in 2022, and to 4.7% in 2023. From 2026 to 2031 the unemployment rate will average 4.1%, well above the 3.7% it average in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. The unemployment rate was a historically low 3.5% in February 2020
Initial claims for unemployment increase or fall or something–but whatever it is, the economy is stalling
The number of initial claims for unemployment for the week ended October 3 was 840,000, the Department of Labor reported this morning. That was above the 820,000 projected by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. And up, er, I mean down, from the 849,000 new claims...
This is as good as the economy gets–for a while
The U.S economy added 4.8 million jobs last month in June. And the official unemployment rate fell to 11.1%. That's the good news. Unfortunately, the gains in jobs and the drop in unemployment are based on data from a survey that measured conditions in the week ended...
Saturday Night Quarterback says (on a Sunday), For the week ahead expect…
...that the big news of the week will be Friday's report on April jobs. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg are forecasting that the economy lost another 8 million jobs in May. That's after the loss of 20.5 million jobs in April. These economists project that the...
Another week, another 3.17 million new claims for unemployment, but stocks move higher
Initial claims for unemployment totaled 3.17 million for the week ended May 2, the Labor Department reported today. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected 3 million new claims for the week. This week's total was down from the 3.85 million initial claims filed...
So what did the Fed’s Clarida say that so disturbed the stock market on Tuesday?
One minute the Standard & Poor's was sailing along, up 1.91% at 3 p.m. New York time. And the next minute stocks were trending downward with the S&P 500 up only 0.75% at 3:42 p.m. The index closed ahead 0.90% for the day. What happened? Federal Reserve Vice...
Today the U.S. economy is looking a tad vulnerable
Yesterday, Wednesday November 28, U.S. stocks saw a huge bounce with the Standard & Poor's 500 climbing 2.3% on a speech by Federal Reserve Chairman "suggesting" that the Fed might slow the speed and limit the number of interest rate increases in 2019. Today,...
