IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID!
RUSH: Other news: "New claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, according to government data, underscoring a weak labor market and the fragile economic recovery. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 479,000 the week ending July 31st. That's the highest level of claims since early April." But last week they went down, didn't they? They went down a smidgen or up, but last week it was the lowest it's been in 20 years. Now it's the highest it's been since April. Analysts talked to by Reuters, partisan political operatives, had forecast claims dropping -- we're still talking unreasonably high numbers of people out of work. The numbers of people who give up trying to find work continues to expand. Scott Wren, senior equity strategist at Wells Fargo Advisors in St. Louis: "The bottom line is that any recovery in employment is going to be very slow. It's likely that we are still at 9.5% unemployment or awfully close to it by the end of this year." Nonfarm payrolls probably fell 65,000 last month after declining 125,000 in June. That's Reuters.
AP: "
New Jobless Claims Rise to 479,000. Labor department said Thursday new claims went up by 19,000." Now, when the AP was trumpeting that seasonally unemployment claims had declined the first two weeks of July, which I just referenced, they neglected to note, we pointed it out here that Obama Motors had skewed the unemployment numbers down with his unprecedented move of not taking a two-week layoff to retool, a detail we did point out. Now they trot out this information to try to explain why the jobless numbers are higher. "Some of the increase stemmed from difficulties the government has in adjusting for seasonal factors. The Labor Department expected a large decline in claims last week as many auto companies usually shut their plants temporarily in early July. Claims were expected to rise during the shutdown and then fall. But this year General Motors and other manufacturers skipped the shutdowns, so claims didn't fall last week as much as expected."
Now, this is ridiculously hilarious. When AP was trumpeting all these seasonably unemployed claims of decline for the first two weeks, they were citing Obama Motors and the fact they didn't shut down. Now they are blaming all this because Obama Motors didn't shut down. They trot out this information to try to explain why the numbers are higher this week. We are waiting for the AP to put the blame on hot weather. They blamed snowstorms in January and February. Now blame the hot weather.