There appeared to be some good news in the unemployment front in the latest Labor Department figures: the number of people filing for unemployment benefits last week dropped more than economists had expected. This requires a little bit of unpacking so as to eliminate any confusion; the Washington Post headline reads "New Jobless Claims Drop More Than Expected," which sounds like bad news.
And it is bad news, in a sense. The ranks of the unemployed continue to grow, and are expected to continue growing for some time to come. A total of 550,000 people filed for unemployment last week, which is a lot. But economists had thought that number would be more like 584,000. In other words, the jobless ranks are still growing, but they're not growing quite as fast as some people expected.
There's an unemployment report due out today from the government on the jobless rate in July, and there's speculation that this will show the jobless ranks aren't growing as fast as they had been earlier this year. Even if this provides more "good news," it's important to keep in mind the context: The jobs news isn't really all that good. It's just not quite as bad as it has been.
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