I try to draw our attention to any glimmer's of hope out there in the economy -- although these days I want to urge a bit of caution in equal measure. We don't want to jump the gun on what looks to be a rocky bottom here..

Still -- get this -- the number of new folks who had to show up to collect unemployment for the first time -- fell last week. In fact, the number of newly jobless getting on the line has now fallen for four out of the last five weeks!

Now -- before you get too excited keep in mind that the overall number of those receiving unemployment checks is still hitting new highs and is over 6.3 million.

So this means while the bleeding may be stopping -- the healing -- meaning new jobs for those out of work -- is not happening.

So this is the kind of thing that economists point to when they talk about "bottoming out" -- perhaps the bad news is slowing down.

Keep in mind - that commercial real estate is just now hitting the skids and the credit card companies are the new "subprime mortgage" -- so hang in there -- we'll continue to take note of the glimmer's of hope and try to keep our eyes on the big picture.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Martha's Glimmer of Hope. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.