Jobless Claims Rise on Back of Hurricane

[denverbill]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=568&e=7&u=/nm/20040826/bs_nm/economy_dc

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The ranks of Americans filing for initial unemployment compensation swelled last week but at least half of this increase was linked to devastation wrought by Hurricane Charley earlier this month, the government said on Thursday.

Initial jobless claims, a rough guide to the pace of U.S. layoffs, rose by a larger-than-expected 10,000 to 343,000 in the week ended Aug. 21 from an upwardly revised 333,000 the prior week, the Labor Department (news - web sites) said.
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OK, no spin here. The total number of new claims for unemployment was 343,000, 10,000 higher than anticipated. But 1/2 of the 10,000 were due to the hurricane. So 5,000 of the 343,000 (1.4%) of the claims were possibly due to the hurricane.

So BLAME THE HURRICANE! It's just getting too hard to blame Clinton, after all.

[redqueen]

1. Shameless

They'll revise the numbers up in a little while, and conveniently forget to clarify how much was actually due to the hurricane.

Journalists... *ptui*

[Zynx]

2. It can't be Bush's fault!

Have you noticed that whenever anything bad happens, they find a way to blame it on something other than Bush?

[Moderator]

3. Duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x777881