Weekly Jobless Claims Riddle Semi-Solved

Hold on to your hats, conservatives: I know there's nothing you despise right about now quite as much as news that Americans are finding jobs, but it looks like it's happening.

Many of you will have known yesterday about the little kerfuffle over the weekly jobless claims number, which came in at a four-year low. Henry Blodget's Business Insider wrote that it was low only because many parts of the state of California didn't report numbers. But the state of California, or the office therein in charge of such matters, wrote to Blodget to say that it did indeed file all its papers:

Mr. Blodget – my name is Loree Levy and I am the Deputy Director of Public Affairs here at the California Employment Development Department (EDD)l. I believe you have been notified that we were issuing a statement in response to your un-sourced and unsubstantiated report about Unemployment Insurance claims data. I am attaching a copy for you here and demand a retraction on your story.

I am not quite sure why you would ever report such assertions without verifying them first. We never received a call from you here at EDD and we could have easily informed you that California has continued to report such UI claim activity timely as is required. If you bothered to look into the economic situation here in CA you would have learned that our unemployment rate is coming down, our jobs numbers are going up, and our weather has been unusually warm which has had some typical seasonal patterns in employment delayed. So no, there is no surprise that our regular UI claim load is going down.

Well, it's still a he said/she said situation. We'll find out more next week. But one kinda doubts a bureaucrat would lie and then demand a retraction. This ain't Lance Armstrong.

Solider terrible news for conservative is that consumer confidence is at a five-year high. Sorry to have to break it to you.