Initial Jobless Claims Unchanged -- Nothing To Do With the Bakken

Remember: the magic number is 400,000; the lower the better 

Like the forgotten soldiers, airmen, and sailors in Afghanistan, it appears the jobless are starting to be forgotten as we move toward November.

I wasn't tuned into CNBC when the numbers came out, so I don't know if much was made of it, but nothing all day regarding the jobless as far as I can tell on CNBC. When I went to Yahoo!Finance, the story was buried quite deeply. Initial jobless claims appear to be stuck around 270,000 and even the talking heads appear to have gotten bored with reporting the same thing each week.

Claims have barely budged in the past four weeks indicating a marginal improvement in the pace of job creation after April's disappointing 115,000 gain in nonfarm payrolls.