Jobless Claims Lower

In today's economy, even bad news is greeted with relief that it's not worse. The number of new jobless claims dipped to 639,000 from 670,000 last week (the most since 1982) and an expectation of 650,000. Still, that's another 639,000 filing for unemployment benefits. "The number of people claiming benefits for more than a week fell slightly to 5.1 million from 5.12 million, after rising to record-highs for five straight weeks," the Associated Press reports. Factoring in the 1.4 million also receiving extended benefits and the true number on "benefit rolls" is 6.5 million, way up from last year's 2.8 million.