The Labor Department, in a release to the Daily Business News said, “In the week ending February 3, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 221,000, a decrease of 9,000 from the previous week’s unrevised level of 230,000. The 4-week moving average was 224,500, a decrease of 10,000 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 234,500. This is the lowest level for this average since March 10, 1973 when it was 222,000.”
The White House press room pointed out in a statement to MHProNews that It was another sign that the president’s economic policies are working; delivering positive results for workers.
As the Daily Business News has previously reported, when jobs are plentiful, and wages are rising, it is a time that many renters begin to turn to home ownership. Others will seek to migrate from an existing home into a new home. These, say publicly trade companies working in factory-built housing, are signs that more buyers should be entering the market. The National Association of Realtors ™ (NAR) has made similar statements.
“Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 232,000 in the latest week. Last week marked the 153rd straight week that claims remained below the 300,000 threshold, which is associated with a strong labor market. That is the longest such stretch since 1970, when the labor market was much smaller,” said Fox Business.
As the “labor market is near full employment, with the jobless rate at a 17-year low of 4.1 percent. The tighter labor market is starting to exert upward pressure on wage growth,” said right-of-center Fox Business.
“The Labor Department reported last week that average hourly earnings jumped 2.9 percent year-on-year in January, the largest gain since June 2009, after advancing 2.7 percent in December,” per Reuters, which added that “Strong wage growth supports optimism among Federal Reserve officials that inflation will increase toward the U.S. central bank’s 2 percent target this year. U.S. financial markets expect the Fed will raise interest rates in March.”
As the Daily Business News has been reporting, fear that the Fed may overreact is one of the drivers of the recent roller coaster, mostly down, of the major markets.
It’s Officially a Correction, What Normally Happens Next, Plus MHMarket UPDate$
A feature in last night’s market report from experts at CNBC indicates the same.
Whiplash. Good News, Bad News, Fake News – The Cost$ of Overhyped Hysteria
But the White House continues to insist that the fundamentals are strong, and thus expects that markets will recover. In the report from last night a video from Investor Business Daily does an impressive job of summarizing the realities vs. the fears as the bulls have briefly gone quiet. ## (News, analysis, and commentary.)
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Soheyla is a managing member of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.
