But unemployment continues to mount. Initial jobless claims rose unexpectedly this week to 576,000 as employers continued to pare down their workforces, the Labor Department reported. Economists had expected a decline from last week’s number of 561,000. Meanwhile, those collecting long-term unemployment benefits for the week ending August 8 rose to 6.24 million.
Kurt Karl, the chief US economist for re-insurer Swiss Re, commented on the figures. “These numbers are definitely not going in the right direction,” he said. “It’s not good at all.... For a real recovery we need the consumer to be in the game but with rising unemployment the consumer is not going to be out there spending.”
Underscoring the socially destructive nature of the post-March gains in share values on the major US stock exchanges, the markets “shrugged off” the latest unemployment report, as one account put it.
For these Friedmanites, high unemployment is the way it's "supposed" to be.
There is also a list of recent layoffs in this article.
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