Weekly Jobless Claims Report

For the week ending Feb. 13 initial claims on the national level rose to 473,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 442,000. Bloomberg’s Bob Willis reports:

Economists forecast claims would fall to 438,000, from a previously estimated 440,000 for the week ended Feb. 6, according to the median of 42 projections in a Bloomberg News survey. Estimates ranged from 440,000 to 480,000.

Companies may want evidence of accelerating sales before hiring after making the deepest payroll cuts in the post-World War II era. Federal Reserve policy makers said last month that while consumer spending has picked up, it’s partly “constrained by a weak labor market.”

“There is still a lot of labor market weakness out there,”said Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities USA Inc. in New York. “I don’t think the weather has had as big an impact on claims as many think it has.”

These trends in unemployment insurance claims may be further evidence of a jobless recovery similar to what Japan experienced in the 1990s. This should sound an alarm for our policymakers in Washington to refocus on measures to encourage savings and capital investments for private sector job creation.

In Texas, initial claims rose 966 to 20,331 for the week ending Feb.6. Continued claims (those receiving benefits for two weeks or more) declined by 3.65 percent to 228,738 – or 19.5 percent higher from a year ago.