increased this week by 4,250 to 471,250.

typo CR...4-week avg. decreased by 4,250.

Wholly Romer Empire

From the previous thread, that income growth rate is in aggregate for the economy, no? Likewise for the debt, erm consumption - the distribution of those two categories would be something to behold I imagine...

How many census hiring were there this month? I can't believe that any sideways or slight increase moving forward is still a decrease in light of the massive hiring going on for temporary workers.

suggests continuing job losses through the middle of March. Note: There is no way to compare directly between weekly claims, and net payrolls jobs.

Just two weeks ago Administration flunkies were talking up six figure job gains in march - largely due to the snow in february. Maybe the Census hires will save the day but here is what Romer's CEA had to say on march 5th:

"The back-to-back snowstorms in the northeast corridor on February 4-7 and 9-11 appear to have substantially reduced payroll employment and shortened the workweek during the reference week for the February labor market data. Based on previous instances of bad weather during the survey reference week, we think that measured February employment was reduced by roughly 100,000 while the measured workweek was shortened by about 0.3 hour. Such a weather-related decline does not indicate that the February level of overall economic activity was weak. Rather, it indicates that the survey reference week did not reliably reflect activity for the month as a whole. Whatever the weather-related loss in February, it likely will be reversed in March, resulting in a larger-than-normal gain."

...

"The workers who were unable to work in the February survey week because of the weather are likely to be working in March. Thus, whatever negative impact the weather had on February employment growth will likely be roughly matched by a positive impact on March employment growth. Similarly, the workweek is likely to rebound to a more normal level."

Driving through the central valley, there's blossoms everywhere and water wont be an issue with the farmers because of the west side of the Sierra getting more snow than the east side on account of el nino, but we're looking at close to 20% unemployment all over the place...

The wildflowers are really going off around here, we have millions of fiddlenecks in full bloom on the 'stead.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending March 6 was 4,579,000, an increase of 12,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 4,567,000.

decreased by 4,250.

So that's a <.001%+/- decrease? Let's not break out the hats just yet, huh.

cipherex wrote:

I agree with Lorax...

This is just one data point (datum?), but I got the first unsolicited call from a head hunter that I've gotten since the end of my last job search. I didn't call him back, so I don't know if it was for contract work or a permanent position. In any event, it would now appear that at least one company is searching for talent.....

OT: Funny story. Mrs.B has a friend whose sister has a teenager with Downs Syndrome, a big hulking kid, by all accounts a sweet child. The other day she (the sister) got a phone call at work from the boy, "Mommy, mommy, a troll knocked on the door and I locked him in the closet." She had him repeat himself. He had locked a troll in the closet. So, she called their local police who dutifully went investigate.

A dwarf census worker had knocked on the door, and the kid scooped him up and stuffed him in the closet. AFAIK, no charges were pressed.

CalculatedRisk wrote:

Time Warner is killing me!

Is there some relevant post about how the economy is affecting them? Like the value of movies is dropping? Yes, movies the classic countercyclic industry from the depression.

Exclusive: Relativity Drops MGM Bid, Too | The Wrap

Relativity Media -- backed by Elliot Associates -- has removed itself from the MGM sale, a person with knowledge of the situation tells TheWrap.

Ryan Kavanaugh's finance firm (backed by the hedge fund Elliot) follows John Malone's Liberty Media, which also bowed Wednesday, out the door -- and just two days before the Friday deadline for final bids.

With the dwindling number of bidders and Time Warner's intent to come in low, the sale of MGM is becoming less certain. If they don't find a seller, the debt-holders could wind up just keeping the troubled studio.

As the numbers kept coming in, Relativity foresaw MGM's cash flow grinding to a halt in the next year or two. The reason: With the studio's restructuring, layoffs that have left only senior management, and sale, there's no new product -- no movies being made, no greenlit projects -- and basically no reason to believe its library will generate enough revenue to justify the price.

MGM has been seeking $2 billion for their 4,000-title library. The library may throw off a certain revenue number today, but it's proving very hard to predict what that number will be in the longer term.

This leaves Len Blavatnik's Access Industries as the likely front-runner. The Russian billionaire has the deepest pockets -- and wants into movie business badly.

Earlier on Wednesday, Ron Grover at Bloomberg broke the news that Liberty Media had dropped out for the same reason as Relativity/Elliott: valuation fears.

I believe it. The valuations have proven to be the sticking point in just about every movie company that has been up for purchase in Hollywood's current yard sale. The problem is that libraries have been the one core, reliable source of revenue for studios that have a hard time predicting profits from movie slates. But right now, those values are in decline because of the plummetting home entertainment business model.

No less than Sony co-chairman Michael Lynton told ShoWest yesterday that DVD revenues have shifted to a 75 percent rental/25 percent purchase model, from a 60/40 split a few years ago.

So with Liberty and Relativity out, that leaves the other players who we have written about ad nauseum: Time-Warner, Lionsgate and Blavatnik's Access.

BSR - Is that legal? It would sure help me to actually mail this form in, which is now sitting in the pile of procrastination.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Good News From President Obama: "What you're doing is working"

Well, at least we are going to hire some of the jobless to count the jobless and the jobbed.

Ouch! I'm testing to be a census worker next week. I get to sit for a 2 hour test with the promise of 15 or so hours of work if I'm hired. Ha!

If weekly claims don't fall below 400,000 soon, all kinds of metrics will be off for the year. Job growth was supposed to start in January, then Spring, now ... ?

Oops. Sorry badger. I'm sure lots of people could do this type of work. It would just kill me to go door to door and ask personal questions to probably mistrusting people. But then, I have zero sales aptitude. I couldn't sell a heater to an eskimo.

Juvenal Delinquent wrote:

Dude, you're practically begging for the black to be circling the doomstead 24/7 if you don't check all the boxes, you do not want to go there.

Please tell me you are 'ing-

"The Greeks continue to amuse me. The deadlinee has now become the deadlinor."

It is the difference between Indy and F1. In Indy everybody got the same dull V8 engine and basically the same car, from the same factory (Honda). In F1 you got more or less creatively cheating racing macho machines and you must cheat in order to win.

But if you overly cheat (meaning your team wins too much (except if your team is Ferrari)), the other cheating teams will put you out and take your winnings because your team violated the F1 rulebook rule #23392-B: "Thou shall not use friction control. Friction control is Devil's magic". But if you don't cheat, you are just another pitiful Honda (or Toyota).

So this is nothing but the usual European tactics. No..maybe..yes maybe..maybe not..definitely forcefully maybe but positively no sometimes. Must be really quite hellish for those Wall Street speculators, waiting for all out EU collapse

BSR, do you have a cheddar-of-the-month plan I can join?

Said the milking boy, Pahrump-pump-pump-pump.

Banks failing to pay TARP dividends increases to 82

snow.