Shocking Jobless Claims Support Case Against Economy & Stocks

Evidence Mounts Against Economy & Stocks

The latest Weekly Jobless Claims Report, released this morning in the pre-market, shocked economists by rising off last week's spiked result. Thus, investors found further conviction this morning to stick with stock sales. The Dow is down another 0.4% at the hour of publishing here.

Markos N. Kaminis earned clients a 23% average annual return over five years as a stock analyst on Wall Street. "The Greek" has written for institutional newsletters, Businessweek, Real Money, Seeking Alpha and others, and Mr. Kaminis has appeared across major media. While writing for Wall Street Greek, he presciently predicted the financial crisis in detail.

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Shocking Jobless Claims Support Case Against Economy & Stocks

After climbing 22K the prior week, weekly jobless claims for the period ended August 7, climbed another 2,000, to 484K. The shocking result compared to economists' expectations for the weekly count to back down to 460K. Sticking stubbornly high over the last forever months, and now rising, this regular jobless claims data is a stark reminder of the anchored unemployment situation that exists in the labor market. This is evident in the four-week moving average for this data, which shows an average count of 473,500; that's up 14,250 over last week's moving average.

The economy is behaving as badly as we have been warning it would. She is now countering the bounce on inventory restocking that came off of panic-low levels of economic activity with a dose of reality. The result is a stagnant economy characterized by staggering and burdensome unemployment and underemployment (16.5%), a profoundly changed lending environment, and stymied consumer spending situation. This is why we say we see trouble behind and trouble ahead.

We include the following labor market data for reader utility:

Extended benefits were available in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin during the week ending July 24.

The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending July 24 were in Puerto Rico (6.8 percent), Pennsylvania (4.9), California (4.7), Oregon (4.7), New Jersey (4.6), Alaska (4.4), Connecticut (4.4), Nevada (4.4), Wisconsin (4.2), and Rhode Island (4.1).

The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending July 31 were in Wisconsin (+1,901), Georgia (+1,738), Pennsylvania (+1,536), Ohio (+1,188), and New York (+1,159), while the largest decreases were in Indiana (-4,377), Florida (-3,816), Tennessee (-2,465), Illinois (-2,056), and Kentucky (-1,567).



Article should interest investors in Paychex (Nasdaq: PAYX), Manpower (NYSE: MAN), Robert Half International (NYSE: RHI), 51Job Inc. (Nasdaq: JOBS), Monster World Wide (NYSE: MWW), Korn/Ferry International (NYSE: KFY), Administaff (NYSE: ASF), Kforce (Nasdaq: KFRC), TrueBlue (NYSE: TBI), Dice Holdings (NYSE: DHX), Kelly Services (Nasdaq: KELYA), SFN Group (NYSE: SFN), CDI Corp. (NYSE: CDI), Cross Country Healthcare (Nasdaq: CCRN), On Assignment (Nasdaq: ASGN), AMN Healthcare Services (NYSE: AHS), Barrett Business Services (Nasdaq: BBSI), Hudson Highland Group (Nasdaq: HHGP), StarTek (NYSE: SRT), RCM Technologies (Nasdaq: RCMT), VirtualScopics (Nasdaq: VSCP), American Surgical (OTC: ASRG.OB), Medical Connections (OTC: MCTH.OB), iGen Networks (OTC: IGEN.OB), St. Joseph (OTC: STJO.OB), General Employment Enterprises (NYSE: JOB), Total Neutraceutical (OTC: TNUS.OB), TeamStaff (Nasdaq: TSTF), Stratum (OTC: STTH.OB), Purespectrum (OTC: PSRU.OB) and Corporate Resource Services (OTC: CRRS.OB).

Please see our disclosures at the Wall Street Greek website and author bio pages found there. This article and website in no way offers or represents financial or investment advice. Information is provided for entertainment purposes only.