Neverending Jobless Claims

This jobless recovery is like an Allman Brothers guitar jam – it goes on forever and many people need a fannypack full of drugs just to get through it.

Jobless claims came in this morning at 454,000, with 21,000 less people applying for unemployment benefits.  Excuse me if I don’t run through the streets tipping over cars like my basketball team just won the NCAA championship.  The number was better than what most expected, but it’s still 454,000.   

The market appears to be taking the number as a positive but if you’re one of the 15 million people not working right now, your recession continues unabated, and in fact, worsens.  Trillions have been spent by the Federal government to shore up and stimulate this economy, so forgive me if I don’t cheer while the ship turns a quarter of an inch in the right direction.

I’m trying to take mild positives in the data as signs of labor market improvement, but because I don’t live in a cave, I just can’t see it and feel it for myself just yet.  The market is going full-on Glass-Is-Half-Full on this number in the pre-market, we’ll see if the good vibes can overshadow the (highly misleading) 9.5% unemployment rate reading we got last week.