And in a REMARKABLY circuitous headline, the Wall Street Journal announces that, "U.S. Jobless Claims Hold Nearly Steady," because they rose only 9,000 from the (revised upward from 730,000 to 736,000) jobless claims of the week before.
It is a remarkably awful headline, and you know that if claims had fallen by 9,000 it would have been called a drop:
Filings for unemployment benefits in the latter half of February reached their lowest level in nearly three months amid signs of slow labor-market improvement.
The Labor Department said jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, rose slightly to 745,000 for the week ended Feb. 27, from a revised 736,000 the prior week. The four week moving-average, which smooths out week-to-week volatility in claims numbers, was just under 800,000, its lowest level since early December.
So the numbers went up, and are still higher than they were in early December.
Screwing with headlines to minimize this is not a good look.
Tomorrow's job numbers should be interesting.
FWIW, I don't think that the Texas energy f%$#-up had much to do with this number, while there were certainly many people in Texas unable to work because of their delusional free-market energy dystopia, it is abundantly clear that none of them could file, because there was no power to run the unemployment offices.
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