Jobless claims fall - don't believe the hype

Official employment figures look good, but as always - you have to take government figures with a grain of salt. "The Labor Department reported that jobless claims dropped to 318,000, down 19,000 from the previous week."

The first big problem is that these are adjusted figures - not the raw numbers. http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/eta/ui/current.htm
Unadjusted figures show that the drop was a mere 7,000 from the previous week.

The second big problem is that these figures represent only 320K workers. The insured unemployment figures, representing ~2.3M workers, was flat from the previous week.

But on a year-over-year basis, unemployment is up 110K workers. Is this a slowdown, a drop, what?

The canary in the coalmine is temp workers: first to be hired, first to be fired.

Unemployment figures for temporary workers show that unemployment is, in fact, rising. And fast
http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/27/news/economy/temp_workers/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote
* Demand for temp workers has been down every month for 6 months
* Demand for temp workers is down 2% for the first 6 months
* Demand for temp workers is crashing: For Q2, Manpower reported a 9% drop, Kelly Services a 6% drop

"In 2001, a fall in temporary employment occurred roughly a year before a drop in overall employment, said the Journal. Economists believe that businesses usually cut temporary workers first before dismissing full-time employees"