More Bad News From Hooverville

Looks like the worst growing economy is getting worse better. U.S. jobless claims fall to 334,000.

The Federal Reserve had been focused on the weak labor market for much of the past four years. But recent comments from Fed officials indicate that they are satisfied with the improvements in job growth and are now focused primarily on inflationary signals.

The full report from the Department of Labor can be found here.

Also reported by AP:

The big decrease of 19,000 was the first decline after two consecutive weekly increases and it was the largest drop since a decrease of 27,000 the week of Feb. 5.

But not to go without casting a negative conclusion to good economic news, AP also saw fit to rain on positive news by concluding with the following:

The below-par jobs gain was blamed in part on rising energy costs that made businesses more cautious about hiring new workers.

However, analysts still remain confident that the economy will grow at a sufficiently robust pace this year to create more than 2 million jobs. In 2004, the economy created 2.17 million new jobs, a significant improvement after two years of job losses and only a small jobs gain in 2003.

I just never remember them stating such things when similar numbers existed in the past administration. Hmmm.