Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Unemployment Spin: Continuing Claims Rise to 6.23 Million


Bloomberg this morning has a positive headline on unemployment:

"U.S. Initial Jobless Claims Decreased to 545,000 Last Week".

Then they say "Applications dropped by 12,000 to 545,000 in the week ended Sept. 12, from a revised 557,000 the week before,"

Lost further down in the article we find this:

"Continuing claims rose by 129,000 in the week ended Sept. 5, to 6.23 million, the report showed. They were forecast to rise to 6.1 million. "

That is a difference of +130,000, yet they choose to talk about the 12,000 decrease in initial claims.

What kind of reporting and spin is this?

The same article contains links where you can view charts of unemployment.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I bet if the market moves down today, then the same article would be rewritten and spinned to the negative from the same numbers.

I saw the same happening on Bloomberg recently.

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