More pesky labor market data

Investors and economists were greeted with the news today that jobless claims rose 69,000 from last week to 375,000, the highest weekly total since 2005.
And we all know that the 2005 data was a hurricane-induced economic event. Prior to that you have to go back to February of 2004 for a bigger weekly total.

They say that this week's data was influenced by some weird accounting for holidays over the last month, and that view is lent credence by some unusually low numbers in recent weeks, but, nonetheless, this is an uncomfortable reminder of what things were like earlier in the decade.

There is more here in this Financial Times report.