The Number of People Filing for Unemployment Benefits Jumped Unexpectedly since Last Week.

 

February 05, 2010 (Hamsayeh.Net) - Despite US President Obama’s recent remarks about the end of recession and beginning of a new era of economic recovery, more US workers filed for unemployment insurance benefits last week than previously anticipated, an indication of a lack confidence in the overall health of the economy.

The number of unemployment insurance benefit jumped to 480,000 from 472,000 a week before.  ‘The pace of improvement has slowed significantly in the last two months, this points to downside risk for consumption and the rest of the economy,’ Anna Piretti, a senior economist at BNP Paribas in New York told Bloomberg.

People question Obama’s over confidence and optimism on job recovery since up until now only a handful of already rich Americans did better than all others while over 90 percent of US citizens lost nearly their lifetime savings during the same period. It is still a big question that how the Obama administration could ever create millions of real jobs when most labor-intensive American businesses have moved overseas creating a huge void in the US economic system.

Moreover, even if millions of productive jobs were to be created tomorrow, it will not have any substantial effect on the export driven economy since regular wages in the US remain way higher than their Asian counterparts making exports of made-in-USA consumer products a lot more expensive than similar quality items from Asia.  The job creation program announced by the President of that North American country, could therefore survive only through government subsidies contrary to the very nature of US capitalist system.