Quote: Eglman wrote in post #1

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Initial jobless claims are unexpectedly high again, coming in at 379,000. Economists predicted 338,000. This is the worst number since March. The Labor Department is blaming it on holiday volatility or something. The week prior was revised up to 369,000. But never mind, it doesn’t mean anything.

Though the BLS says no states estimated jobless claims last week, they would suggest, ever so humbly, that we ignore this data and focus on the trend of the 4-week moving average. Total benefit rolls also rose to 3 month highs, up 94k to 2.88 million. The piece de resistance – non-seasonally-adjusted initial claims were down 48.2k (against the seasonally-adjusted 10k), yet both are up exactly 13k from a year ago (seems the Sandy-based YoY adjustments are playing havoc).

Read the whole thing, we now have the lowest labor participation rate since 1978! But expect the unemployment rate to drop as millions of people lose their extended unemployment benefits.

http://lonelyconservative.com/2013/12/37...Conservative%29

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That highlighted sentence is not exactly accurate. The unemployment rate, is calculated based upon the household survey, not the number of people collecting unemployment. The number of people collecting is only used in annual 'reset'.)

However, read the original article at ZeroHedge:

Zitat

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Lastly, 1,374,031 American on Emergency Unemployment Compensation (ie. extended benefits) - which are about to run out thanks to Congress...

which will implicitly send the unemployment rate plunging....

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The linked article is about the creative interpretation of 'not in the labor force' put into effect under Clinton.

Two charts that are worth a million words: