National Economy -- Not a Bakken Story -- For Folks Interested Only in the Bakken Skip This Post -- This Is For My Personal Archives

First time jobless claims: 409,000. For newbies, the critical milestone is 400,000.
The figure remains higher than it was three weeks earlier, before the labor dispute at Verizon pushed the numbers up.

US productivity declined at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in 2nd quarter, a bigger drop than the 0.3 percent decline reported a month ago.

They argue that the economy can tolerate a brief period of weaker productivity growth if it means that companies have reached the limit on the amount of work they can squeeze out of the existing work force and begin hiring back the millions of workers laid off during the recession. That would boost income growth and result in stronger consumer demand which they hope will drive the economy to a faster expansion.

During the recession and immediately afterward, productivity soared with worker efficiency rising at an annual rate of 4.1 percent last year, the strongest performance in eight years. Economists at JPMorgan Chase are forecasting that productivity this year will grow by just 0.7 percent.

It's now the Obama economy. 

Only a third of all Americans approve of how President Barack Obama is handling the economy, according to a new national survey.