Unemployment Rates 'Unexpectedly' Rise, Sun 'Unexpectedly' Sets in the West

I'd say that we all should make a drinking game out of the most recent batch of economic news being classified by our media or government as 'unexpected', but I wouldn't want to be held liable for somebody ending up with alcohol poisoning.

An unexpected jolt in people applying for unemployment benefits last week raised the number of applications to a seasonally adjusted 412,000.

It was the first increase in three weeks, and could be a sign that people who stopped looking for work are coming back, but the 27,000 additional requests for assistance for the week ending April 9 put the jobless aid figure at its highest point since mid-February.

Applications near 375,000 are consistent with a sustained increase in hiring. Applications peaked during the recession at 659,000.

The four-week average of applications, a less volatile measure, rose to 395,750. Applications have dropped by about 6 percent over the past two months.

Companies added more than 200,000 jobs in March for the second straight month, the first time that has happened since 2006. The unemployment rate fell to a two-year low of 8.8 percent and has dropped a full percentage point since November.

However, a more sobering reason for the drop is that the number of people who are either working or seeking a job is surprisingly low for this stage of the recovery. People without jobs who aren't looking for one aren't counted as unemployed. Once they start looking again, they're classified as unemployed and the unemployment rate can go back up.

It's like I said back when this blog was only a few weeks old- insist that higher unemployment numbers will be the 'new normal' from here on out and that we're in a robust economic recovery nonetheless. Even some of the Wisconsin state Democrats who fled to Illinois attempted to justify their tactics by saying that Gov. Walker's budget proposal limiting public employee collective bargaining and requiring public workers to pay more towards their retirement and healthcare plans was unnecessary because the nation was supposedly in the midst of an economic recovery.

Yes- apparently LOTS of economic recoveries feature soaring unemployment, a cratering housing market, record high food, fuel and commodity prices and the dollar plummeting in value with each passing week.