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Analysts project jobless claims up for the month

Jeremy Hobson Jul 1, 2010
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Analysts project jobless claims up for the month

Jeremy Hobson Jul 1, 2010
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TEXT OF INTERVIEW

Steve Chiotakis: A report out this morning shows the number of people filing for jobless benefits for the first time was up by 13,000. That’s contrary to what analysts expected — 472,000 Americans went to state employment offices seeking unemployment checks. Marketplace’s Jeremy Hobson is with us live from our studio in New York with the latest. Good morning, Jeremy.

Jeremy Hobson: Good morning, Steve.

Chiotakis: So — a big employment report comes out tomorrow. This weekly data doesn’t actually factor into that, but does it tell us anything about the broader picture?

Hobson: Well, it tell us that there are some real hiccups in this recovery. As far as the labor market is concerned, it doesn’t appear to be the V-shaped recovery many were hoping for. Now that said Steve, obviously, we’re in much better shape than we were even a year ago, when we were losing almost a half million jobs a month. The report that comes out tomorrow is not expected to be nearly that bad. I spoke with Ray Stone at Stone and McCarthy Research Associates. Here’s his view of our current situation:

Ray Stone: Employment is growing slowly. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to get gains every month. In fact, I’m looking for a decline of 50,000 [jobs] for the month of June, following a gain of 431,000 in May.

But he says a lot of those 431,000, as you know, took temporary census jobs. And now, Ray Stone says many of those people will transition into the kind of private sector summer jobs that they would have taken if they hadn’t joined the Census bureau.

Chiotakis: Now Jeremy, we got some more data on job cuts this morning from the outplacement company Challenger, Gray and Christmas. What does that information tell us?

Hobson: Well it’s not that bad, actually. The number of planned layoffs rose about 1.5 percent in June to 39,000. That’s still close to a four-year low, and the CEO of the company that produces this data says it means employers are not expecting a double-dip recession.

Chiotakis: OK. Marketplace’s Jeremy Hobson, reporting from our New York bureau. Jeremy, thanks.

Hobson: You’re welcome.

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