Jobless Claims Rise 13,000, Weather Warms and IMF’s Lagarde Has Her Hand Out for More USA Gruel

Confounded Interest ^ | 04/12/2012 | Anthony B. Sanders
April 12 (Bloomberg) — More Americans than forecast filed claims for jobless benefits last week, a sign the pace of improvement in the labor market is slowing.
Jobless claims increased 13,000 in the week ended April 7 to 380,000, the highest since Jan. 28, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey called for 355,000 claims. The number of people on unemployment benefit rolls and those receiving extended payments declined.
 
On a non seasonally adjusted basis, oops!
 
On the positive side, continuing jobless claims dropped on a SA basis.
 
As my friend Rebel Cole at DePaul will undoubtedly be commenting, it has been a warmer than usual winter. Here is the weather abnormality for March 2012. So, hiring may have been overheated (pardon the pun) compared to previous years because of the warm weather. Has the labor market used up its slack?
 
The IMF’s Christine Lagarde is in the USA saying that the austerity in the Eurozone is painful and the USA needs to pony up big bucks so big spending Socialist countries don’t have to pay for their policies. She is trying to raise $400 billion (of which the US will have a large share).

“Mr. Obama, may I have some more gruel, sir?”