(TheConservativeTimes.org) – The United States job market has been quite surprising as it holds steady, but the unemployment and jobless benefits number has raised some eyebrows as it has sat at exactly 212,000 applicants for the last five or six weeks.
The number hasn’t moved at all since mid-March leading many to wonder what is truly going on. The only week that was varied was the week of March 30 which stood at 222,000 applicants.
People were speaking out all over social media about the findings once they were released. Market veteran Jim Bianco, head of Bianco Research, said “How is this statistically possible? Five of the last six weeks, the exact same number.”
“Initial claims for unemployment insurance are state programs, with 50 state rules, hundreds of offices, and 50 websites to file. Weather, holidays, seasonality, and economic vibrations affect the number of people filing claims weekly,” he added. “Yet this measure is so stable that it does not vary by even 1,000 applications a week.”
People quickly hopped onto the thread and gave their theories which included “numbers made up” and “someone’s cooking the books.” People accused someone of making up the number and being untruthful about the real number.
Some people said that if you look at each state, they vary greatly and that the amount is simply just the seasonal moments now and it reflects how steady unemployment has been.
A Labor Department spokesperson said that maintaining that same number for an extended period is uncommon but that it is not considered anomalous.
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