The quantity of people who are newly unemployed are starting to request less unemployment benefits. The government claimed on Thursday that the quantity of requests for unemployment benefits are finally starting to taper off. The unfortunate news is that the number of individuals who are still collecting jobless benefits has risen to 6.78 million, which is the biggest amount on record ever since 1967.

The Labor Department claimed that the quantity of primary claims for jobless benefits has decreased from 636,000 to 623,000. The amount is below the estimates given from analysts of 635,000.

Additional good news came from the government today stated that demand for ?expensive manufactured merchandise? posted their second rise in three months in April. This may possibly mean that the manufacturing downturn is finally lessening also.

There was also bad news in the report from Thursday. The government released information stating that the sale of new houses were dull in April. At the side of that information, 12% of homeowners were behind schedule on their mortgage payment or were previously in foreclosure.

Of course, there were quite a few lay-offs to be reported through the jobless claims. Many of which were directly related to the Auto industry.

Initial jobless claims a year ago were at 378,000, and we were officially in a slump then also. The numbers at this time are still a long way from what a successful economy should be performing at. With unemployment claims increasing, even if they aren?t rising at the rate that some were expecting, many are expecting the unemployment numbers to climb from 8.9% in April to 10% by the end of the year. 5.7 million jobs have been lost since December 2007 ? The most ever since World War 2.

California ended up reporting the biggest increase in claims of only 5,447. The increases could be directly accredited to firings in building, commerce and service industries that tend to cater to higher end customers. At the same time, Michigan reported a reduction in claims. A plunge of 9,758 in that state was said to be directly associated to the cut in firings in the automobile industry.

It is nice to see some improvement in the jobless claims across the board. Once more, as a just starting out graduate any information coming from the employment area in the upbeat direction is welcomed information. I?m positive there are an abundance of individuals who are either without a job or who are concerned about their own job safekeeping that are looking at this information and breathing a little sigh of relief at the same instance.