Jobless Claims Drop Past ‘Meaningless’ Milestone

Weekly jobless claims dropped to 466,000 for the week of Nov. 21, according to figures from the Department of Labor, the first time since January claims have hit under the 500,000 mark. The four-week average was 496,500.

This is a “nice milestone, but practically meaningless,” according to Mark Gongloff at the WSJ.

Why? Because that number is still far too high. Weekly claims should be solidly under 400,000 to lower unemployment.

Job growth typically begins happening when weekly claims average 350k-400k—there’re always, even in a healthy economy, a large number of weekly claims because of employment churn.

So yes, great milestone, but no growth yet.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.