Thursday, March 31, 2011
U.S. Jobless Claims Fall, Consumer Confidence Improves
Fewer Americans filed claims for jobless benefits last week and consumer confidence stabilized, a sign the world’s largest economy is weathering the jump in commodity prices heading into the second quarter. The Labor Department also issued its annual revisions to the seasonal-adjustment factors, which caused a “mild upward shift” in the number of jobless claims, an agency spokesman said as the figures were released to reporters. Applications were projected to fall to 380,000 from 382,000 initially reported for the prior week, according to the median forecast of 42 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from 370,000 to 390,000. The Labor Department revisions pushed the previous week’s figure up to 394,000.
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3 comments:
Regarding the current high oil prices and inflated prices in some consumer goods, this is just way too exciting to hear. In January, news were full with doubt about the fall in unemployment rate as well as the increase in the Consumer Confidence Index. Since then, the trend keeps going as Jobless claims continues to drop further and it helps to boost consumer confidence higher.
I look forward to see the production sector to revive in the next two months and helps to stabilize the economy.
This is encouraging to see that the consumer confidence is improving and that we are making steps toward full employment. Although it looks that full employment will not be here in the US for most likely for three years or so if the jobs per month continue as it did in March. But there is a chance that an increase in the average jobs per month will bring full employment more quickly.
It is nice to hear that the consumer confidence has been improving for the last several months. The consumers are predicting that the economy will do well in the future. It is interesting to see that the reduced unemployment rate coincides with the increased consumer confidence (negative relationship). So it is expected that the economy will do better for next couple of months and so on. My only concern is the rising oil prices (resulting in increasing the overall price of all goods) and that it would reduce the consumer confidence and increase the unemployment rate.
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