Job market somewhat less miserable In U.S. economic news, the slow improvement of the U.S. labor market continues, emphasis on “slow,” of course, and the baseline of general awfulness on which this improvement is founded. First-time applications for unemployment insurance fell by 33,000 last week to the lowest level since last November, just as the economy was beginning its fall from a cliff. The four-week moving average of initial claims, which is a better way of looking at these volatile figures, fell by 9,000, to its lowest level since last December. The… Read More