The U.S. Department of Labor released "The Employment Situation" for April 2008 today. Nonfarm payroll employment was down 20,000 in April. For the first three months this year, job losses totaled 240,000. For the last 10 years, an average of 107,000 jobs have been added a month. The unemployment rate went down to 5.0% from 5.1% last month.
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Labor also released the weekly figures for initial weekly unemployment claims. Initial claims came in at 355,000 versus 406,000 for the previous week. Weekly data is very volatile so the four-week average is more commonly looked at. The four-week average increased to 376,750 from 374,750 in the previous week.
The increase in Unemployment so far has been modest. This is similar to GDP, Personal Income and Manufacturing that was reported earlier this week. If we are going through a recession, unemployment could spike up to the 6%-7% range.
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