THE BASIS POINT

Initial Jobless down but…

 

Initial Jobless Claims (week ended 7/5/2014)

– Initial Claims (seasonally adjusted) 304,000. Previous was 315,000

– Initial Claims (unadjusted) totaled 322,248 an increase of 16,542 (or +5.4 percent) from the previous week

– 4-week Moving Average 311,500

Initial Jobless Claims have been low but if we look inside last week’s BLS Employment Situation Report 288,000 more people are working but 827,000 fewer people were working full-time. This big jump in people reporting that they are working part-time is only in the most recent report. If this continues it will not be positive for either the economy or those people working part-time.

Business Inventories (May 2014)

– Inventories +0.5%. Previous was +1.0%

This is important because it is part of GDP.

When people talk about what is wrong with the economy they pay too much attention to the consumer side thinking that consumers drive economic growth.

The following is a part of a message I sent to an economist friend regarding what drives economic growth:

Did Blackberry, iPhone, and iPad get created by demand or supply? What was the demand for PC’s the day the Apple II or TRS 80 came out? What was the demand for the Internet before 1995? What was the demand for cellphones before there were cell phones? What was the demand for Tesla before there was Tesla? Were the Wright brothers responding to a demand for air travel?

 

 

 

 

READ OUR NEWSLETTER

YOUR COMPETITORS ALREADY DO

Comments [ 0 ]

WHAT DID WE MISS? COMMENT BELOW.

All comments reviewed before publishing.

2 × three =

NEED CLARITY IN ALL THIS CONFUSION?

GET OUR NEWSLETTER.

x