Initial weekly unemployment claims, ending January 23rd are out.

In the week ending Jan. 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 470,000, a decrease of 8,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 478,000. The 4-week moving average was 456,250, an increase of 9,500 from the previous week's revised average of 446,750.

As usual last week's number of 482,000 was revised, but this time downward by 4,000.

Look at these graphs. First is just this recession period.

Now look at the entire time period. Gray bars are recessions.

One can see, clearly, that initial claims are simply no where near down to pre-recession levels, implying we have some job creation. This is bad folks!

Another astounding number of people fell off the rolls, which also means they are no longer getting a UI check.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending Jan. 16 was 4,602,000, a decrease of 57,000 from the preceding week's revised level of 4,659,000.

Meanwhile we get complete BULLSHIT analysis on how jobs are gone forever and never a mention, not one friggin' word about offshore outsourcing, the fact there are 1.5 million foreign guest workers in this country, biased bad trade deals and our trade deficit. Not even a token acknowledgment that this is precisely where the jobs went.