First Time Unemployment Benefits Rise; The Spin Continues -- October 30, 2014

Wow, talk about spin.

This is the headline from Bloomberg: Fewer Americans Filed for Jobless Benefits in Past Month. I fell line, hook, and sinker for that. Wow, you have to read this closely. Look at the first two paragraphs:

Fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment benefits over the past month than at any time in more than 14 years, a sign the strengthening U.S. economy is buoying the labor market.

The four-week average of jobless claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, fell to 281,000 in the period ended Oct. 25, the lowest since May 2000, from 281,250 the week before, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. Compared with the prior week, applications for benefits rose by 3,000 to 287,000. 

I had a devil of a time finding the number for this week because I was reading through this so fast. The number is there, but it's buried (usually it's the first line); and second, in the three years or so of posting jobs data, this is the first time, I recall, that Bloomberg put the four-week average first; that is never, never, ever done. I was wondering why the market was down on seemingly good news; now I know. The jobs picture is not getting better. It's mired in quicksand.

Applications ROSE this week. The reason the four-week average -- the less-volatile measure -- is lower is due to the anomalous report of two weeks ago when the number dropped an incredible (as unbelievable, never explained, impossible, LOL-hilarious) 50,000 or something like that.

But from the headline today, I thought first-time applications THIS WEEK plummeted. In fact they rose.

Is this the last report before the election?

The worse thing: a) it delayed me to getting to what I love most, the Bakken; and, b) put me in the mood to take the day off, enjoy Starbucks coffee (and a donut). So, we'll see.

[Update, two hours later: it appears Reuters read my note. Even they realized their reporting/spin "jumped the shark." Reuters has this headline: "US Jobless Claims Rise, But Underlying Labor Market Trends Firming." Nice to see they fessed up.]

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And the spin continues.

Yesterday, I posted:

The Fed is so happy with low unemployment, it has ended quantitative easing. After $1.6 trillion.

This is from the source that came up with the $16-trillion figure:

An effort to stimulate economic growth through easier lending and an increased money supply, the Fed’s current round of quantitative easing, as the program is called, has been in place since September 2012, when the jobless rate was 7.8 percent. Since then, the Fed has purchased $1.6 trillion in Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities.  

I thought the $1.6 trillion was low, but I don't have time to fact check, and in the big scheme of things, who cares? It turns out, at least one reader cares. It appears that mainstream media US News failed to account for everything.

I hate to say it, but it appears Wiki is a more reliable source than mainstream print media. From Wiki, the total is a tad higher than $1.6 trillion:

On 18 September 2013, the Fed decided to hold off on scaling back its bond-buying protram. Purchases were halted on October 29, 2014, after accumulating $4.5 trillion in assets. 

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Predictable: ObamaCare
Employers Dropping Health Care Coverage For Their Employees To Save Money

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that "small firms start to drop health plans." These small health firms view ObamaCare as inviting and affordable.

Small companies are starting to turn away from offering health plans as they seek to reduce costs and increasingly view the health law’s marketplaces as an inviting and affordable option for workers.

In the latest sign of a possible shift, WellPoint Inc. said Wednesday its small-business-plan membership is shrinking faster than expected and it has lost about 300,000 people since the start of the year, leaving a total of 1.56 million in small-group coverage.

Some other insurers have flagged a similar trend.

Aetna Inc. Chief Financial Officer Shawn M. Guertin said the company was seeing “some erosion at the bottom of the market” among employers with two to 10 workers.

Kaiser Permanente is seeing “some contraction” in the small-group market, particularly in places where insurers are offering cheap individual plans.

Laura Land, who co-owns cellphone-case-maker Empire Cell Phone Accessories in Riverside, CA, which has 38 full-time employees, said the company plans to discontinue its health plan next year and instead direct workers to the state’s health-insurance exchange.

“It’s getting to be too much paperwork for us to administer the plan, especially if workers are going to decline anyway and go to the exchange,” said Ms. Land, adding that several new hires recently turned down the plan in favor of cheaper exchange options.

It’s not yet clear how widespread the shift will ultimately be. An April survey by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans found that 22.5% of employers with 50 or fewer employees said they “definitely will” still be offering health benefits in five years, while an additional 42% said they “very likely” would. Among large employers with 500 or more employees, about three-quarters fell into those two categories.

The health law doesn’t penalize companies with fewer than 50 workers that don’t offer coverage, and those with fewer than 100 employees won’t face fines until 2016.

So, over time, all things being equal, the number of folks signing up for ObamaCare will start to increase, but not for the reasons the mainstream media will cite.