The number of new jobless benefit claims dropped less than the expected number for last week.

The Labor Department released Thursday that first time unemployment claims dropped 8,000 from the week before to 470,000.  Experts had expected that number to have dropped to 450,000.  The missing of the mark by 5 percent is showing that their is a weak spot in the economic recovery.

There are over 4.6 million Americans receiving unemployment benefits as of today.  That is a drop of 57,000 compared to last week.  The continuing claims do not include Americans that have used up their 26 weeks of benefits and are receiving an extension by the federal government.

There are over 15.2 million American workers looking for work, according to Fox News.  That is one out of every eight workers that is unemployed.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Employment News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.