Jobless Claims Rise Unexpectedly

Again?

When will experts stop being surprised by bad economic news? Barack Obama is still president. Nancy Pelosi is still the Speaker of the House. And Harry Reid is still the Senate Majority Leader. Until they're gone, I won't expect anything else.

The number of Americans seeking jobless benefits last week unexpectedly rose to a one-month high, indicating firings are staying elevated even as the U.S. economy grows.

Initial jobless claims increased by 12,000 to 472,000 in the week ended June 12, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News projected 450,000 claims, according to the median forecast. The number of people receiving unemployment insurance rose, while those getting extended benefits dropped.

Meanwhile Obama and Biden are celebrating "Recovery Summer!" Woo Hoo!

Vice President Biden today will kick off “Recovery Summer,” a six-week-long push designed to highlight the jobs accompanying a surge in stimulus-funded projects to improve highways, parks, drinking water and other public works. Biden will present President Obama with a report laying out a spike in stimulus activity this summer, and how it will contribute to a steady climb to a total of 3.5 million Recovery Act jobs by the end of the year. Biden, Obama and other administration officials will travel to more than two dozen Recovery Act project sites in coming weeks. Tomorrow, the president will travel to Columbus, Ohio, to mark the groundbreaking of the 10,000th Recovery Act road project, around Nationwide Children’s Hospital. On Monday, Biden will travel to Midland, Mich., for the groundbreaking of the new Dow Kokam advanced battery manufacturing facility.

--David Axelrod said: “This summer will be the most active Recovery Act season yet, with thousands of highly-visible road, bridge, water and other infrastructure projects breaking ground across the country, giving the American people a first-hand look at the Recovery Act in their own backyards and making it crystal clear what the cost would have been of doing nothing. … In the face of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, Republicans in Congress chose to play politics with economic recovery and declared the Recovery Act a failure before it even began. They made a cynical bet that if the President fails, they win. Democrats chose to act by tackling the crisis head-on. Just over a year later, the Recovery Act is putting millions of Americans to work and helping the economy grow again. But our work is far from over.”

Proving, of course, that the real motive for the stimulus was to purchase the 2010 election with money borrowed for our children.