New Jobless Claims Decline by 12,000

The Labor Department said ont Thursday that initial claims for unemployment insurance dropped to a seasonally adjusted 545,000 from an upwardly revised 557,000 the previous week. According to Thomson Reuters, Wall Street analysts had expected claims to rise by 5,000.

That decline is the third one in the past four weeks. The four-week moving average 8,750 to 563,000. Compare that, however, to the number that is considered typical in a healthy economy: 325,000.

Worse, the number of people claiming benefits for more than a week rose by 129,000 to a seasonally adjusted 6.2 million. If you include the federal extended unemployment benefits, 9.01 million people received unemployment insurance in the week ending Aug. 29. That's down from 9.16 million the previous week. You'll recall that in this "Great Recession," Congress has added up to 53 weeks of extended benefits in addition to the 26 weeks provided by states.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday that he felt the recession is over. At the same time, he added that the economy isn't likely to grow fast enough for unemployment numbers to drop anytime soon.

The unemployment rate is not expectedt to peak until 2010 at somwhere above 10% (it is currently 9.7%). Those numbers don't include the underemployed or those who have simply given up looking for work.