As the Labor Department reported earlier today, jobless claims are up.
The number of new people signing up for unemployment benefits last week shot up to the highest level in more than two years, fresh evidence of the damage to a national economy clobbered by housing, credit and financial crises.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that new applications filed for unemployment insurance jumped by a seasonally adjusted 38,000 to 407,000 for the week ending March 29. The increase left claims at their highest point since Sept. 17, 2005, following the blows of the devastating Gulf Coast hurricanes.
“This report supports the view that the jobs market is deteriorating toward recessionary conditions,” said T.J. Marta, a fixed-income strategist at RBC Capital Markets.
The latest snapshot of labor activity was worse than economists had anticipated. They had predicted claims would be much lower, around 365,000.
Don’t look for a banking job, because if this report is correct, banks will be the next employer to do some major downsizing.
Commercial banks will cut a record 200,000 US jobs in the next 12 to 18 months to reduce costs as the credit crunch continues to wreak havoc on the bottom lines of some of the world’s most prestigious financial institutions.
Celent, the financial research firm, said that one in 10 jobs in the US commercial banking industry will be lost as the write-downs from sub-prime investments pollute the entire banking system.
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