First time claims are looking good. As Jeffry Bartash at Maket Watch reports:
The number of people who applied for unemployment benefits last week rose by 12,000 to 293,000, but initial claims continue to hover near an eight-year bottom amid a very low rate of layoffs, new government data showed.
Meanwhile, as Reuters reports:
Orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods in August posted their biggest drop on record.
But:
a rebound in business spending plans pointed to underlying strength in the manufacturing sector.
Even so, people are nervous and, as Danielle Trubow of Bloomberg reports:
Consumer confidence fell last week to an almost four-month low as Americans’ views of the economy and their finances deteriorated.
Looming over these figures is another, less transitory number of intense interest to some people who have jobs now but may lose them in November. As reported by Simone Pathe of PBS:
… most Americans (72 percent) think the economy is still in a recession.
