The Department of Labor reported the following stats for the week ending April 3:  seasonally adjusted initial claims were 460,000, an increase of 18,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 442,000. The 4-week moving average was 450,250, an increase of 2,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 448,000.As I’ve stated in past reports, don’t pay much attention to a single week.  Historically, the week before Easter and the two weeks following have more volatile changes.  Economists say that figures in the low 400s indicate that the economy is neither getting much better or much worse.A lot was written about the 160,000 new jobs that were added in March, however, 48,000 of those jobs were temporary workers for the 2010 census.The most significant news came from the Business Roundtable.  For the first time in two years, more CEOs expect to be adding jobs rather than cutting jobs.  A survey of these CEOs of big U.S. companies, says that 29% of chief executives expect to increase corporate payrolls over the next six months, while 21% predict that the workforces will shrink.  Half see no change in jobs.  That’s the first time since the first quarter of 2008 that more CEOs have expected to increase jobs rather than shrink them.
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