High fives all around

High five someone today. Walk around with a little bit of a strut. Why? Because 520,000 people lost their jobs last month. And that's great news.

The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits fell for a third straight week last week, government data showed on Thursday, indicating some loss of force in the pace of the labor market's deterioration.

Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits fell 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 621,000 in the week ended May 30, the Labor Department said. The week covered the Memorial Day holiday, which could have had an impact on the data.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast new claims slipping to 620,000 from a previously reported count of 623,000.

The number of people staying on the benefit rolls after collecting an initial week of aid fell 15,000 to 6.74 million in the week ended May 23, the latest week for which the data is available.

This was the first time that so-called continued claims have declined since the week of January 3 and was also the first time in 17 weeks that they did not set a record. That held the insured unemployment rate at 5.0 percent.

Productivity even rose 1.6%. Seems like this horrific financial apocalypse is going to avoid that whole apocalypse. Which is a little disappointing as I have all these canned goods, bullets, and just finished armoring up a Daewoo Lanos for raiding purposes. But it is good news for the country...as long as you squint your eyes a bit and try not to focus your mind on the fact that over half a million people still lost their jobs last month. Sure, these are still horrifying figures, but they need to be put in context. Soon we'll be into the heady territory of "only 300,000 people lost their jobs this month" and maybe even within six months we'll be down to a point where the Obama Administration can give us the individual names of the dozen or so people who lost their jobs. Then we can start the task of rebuilding our shattered society and taking down all the razor wire and road barriers we put up, "just in case."

In addition to being a major boner-kill to survival fetishists, this jobs report (combined with GM finally starting to get its shit wired) has also scuttled plans to move the remaining population of Detroit five miles down the road so that the city-husk can be used by the military to give troops combat training inside of bombed out urban desolation. It's a good news/bad news type of day. So remember: half a million people losing their jobs is good news for the foreseeable (non-apocalyptic) future. Isn't it great?