Stocks rise on jobs recovery optimism

[HughMoran]

NEW YORK - Stocks rose Thursday after a new report showed initial jobless claims fell more than expected last week.

The Labor Department said first-time jobless claims dropped to 442,000 last week. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had forecast claims would drop to 450,000.

It was the fourth straight weekly drop in initial claims, a sign that job losses are slowing and the economy is inching toward job creation. Many economists expect March will show job growth. High unemployment remains the biggest obstacle to a sustained recovery.

...


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36032928/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/


____________________________________________________________________

Good to see jobless claims fall below the ~450,000 'equilibrium' point.

[Common Sense Party]

1. Dow up 94 now, at 10,930... I'm tempted to sell.

I just keep waiting for some other show to drop. (Commercial real estate? More credit default swaps? Who knows.)

I'm usually not this pessimistic, but the last 12 months have been a huge run-up.

[Clio the Leo]

2. yep, was about to say the same thing....

.... nice to be back under the 450,000.

(and to save anyone else the trouble, yes, I know it's NOT nice for those 442,000)

[dmallind]

3. A lot of people fixate on the magnitude of this number

but few people look at, or even consider, the almost exactly equal number of people who find jobs every week. Obviously if the 450K initial claims were the whole story, the entire workforce would be unemployed in a very short time (at about 2.2m a month it would take maybe 5-6 years to not have a single job in the nation!). The difference of course determines jobs lost or gained, and pretty widespread expectation is the March numbers will show more people found work than lost it for the first time in a long while. Even if not though, the 450K are only one side of the story, and it's a number useful only as a relative not absolute metric.

[Clio the Leo]

5. Yeah, I'm looking forward to those March figure as well. NT

[tridim]

4. This is a GOP/RW nightmare

So, expect this news to be completely supressed by the Conservative Entertainment Complex.