Well, that was misleading.  Yesterday, the AP ran a story with the headline “New jobless claims drop slightly to 623,000” that seemed to indicate (somewhat) good news. (Sure, it’s a small drop – to what remains an unnerving number – but a drop nonetheless, and these days I’ll take what I can get in terms of hopeful signs.)  In actuality, however, while the number showed an initial drop in jobless benefit claims from an upwardly revised figure of 631,000 the previous week, it was still above analysts’ expectations of 610,000 claims.  Thus, a more accurate headline might’ve been “Jobless claims suck only slightly more than first anticipated.”

Thanks for trying to get one past us, AP, but we all know that the jobless numbers suck. Continue reading