ECONOMIC STUNNER – AT 9:01 A.M. ET:  Are we headed for a double-dip recession?  That possibility grew greater today with the release of new, tremendously discouraging job figures that raise serious doubts about the "recovery."  From Bloomberg:

The number of claims for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, pushed up by auto-plant shutdowns and other unusual events that seasonal variations failed to take into account, the Labor Department said.

Applications for jobless benefits jumped by 43,000 to 474,000 in the week ended April 30, the most since August, Labor Department figures showed today. A spring break holiday in New York, a new emergency benefits program in Oregon and auto shutdowns caused by the disaster in Japan were the main reasons for the surge, a Labor Department spokesman said as the data was released to the press.

Even before last week, claims had drifted up, raising concern the improvement in the labor market has stalled. Employers added 185,000 workers to payrolls in April, fewer than in the prior month, and the unemployment rate held at 8.8 percent, economists project a Labor Department report to show tomorrow.

“April seems to have shown a little bit of a slowdown,” Thomas Simons, an economist at Jefferies Group Inc. in New York, said before the report. “We haven’t seen as rapid an improvement in the labor market as we’ve seen in previous months.”

And...

Economists forecast 410,000 claims, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. Forecasts ranged from 395,000 to 450,000 in the survey of 46 economists. The Labor Department revised the prior week’s figure up to 431,000 from an initially reported 429,000.

COMMENT:  Please note that the actual number of claims exceeded even the most pessimistic prediction among economists. 

Most political pundits are saying that the glow from the bin Laden operation will soon fade, and that Obama will be left with the economy as the main issue in 2012.  If today's report reflects another downward trend, the president will be in serious trouble very quickly, saved, if he is to be saved, only by the incompetence of the Republican Party.

Stand by.  It's going to be a bumpy campaign.

May 5, 2011