The Department of Labor reported that the weekly unemployment insurance claims fell from 588,000 to 550,000 in one week.
That means 38,000 people either did not claim unemployment or they found a job.
What Jobs Mean to Our Economy
If 38,000 people actually found work last week, that would be equal to the entire town of Coppell, Texas now gainfully employed or the entire student population of New York University.
If these same 38,000 people made the national average wage index, then that would be 38,000 people now earning $40,405.48 per year.
If these 38,000 newly employed people then spent $5 a day for lunch at McDonald’s for the entire work week then that is $950,000 spent to bolster the economy
(By the way, $950,000 is a little less than what two Wall Street Executives are now allowed to earn under the current administration.)
Or, $950,000 can purchase 237,500 Happy Meals at McDonald’s, in turn supporting the 18 vendors and 30 employees (on average) which are needed to support one McDonald’s restaurant.
If there are approximately 8,600 McDonald’s restaurants in the country then that is 258,000 people and 154,800 additional businesses positively affected by the 38,000 people who found work last week.
These hypothetical figures show that every job counts toward stimulating the economy.
Tags: jobs, Unemployment
This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 11:08 am and is filed under Miscellaneous News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Good comment. Yes, this is the hopeful side of that number. Stay tuned for our blog post that digs into this. Sadly, there’s still a ton of pain and hurting out there from unemployment. Thanks for the comment, Tom.
I think the 38,000 is the drop in INITIAL claims. There are still 6.3 million Americans without jobs who are collecting jobless benefits. That continued claims figure marches ever higher, as you might expect when there are still a 1/2 million new jobless every week. Not much good news here I’m afraid, and not very many happy meals. There’s no drop in anything, just a slight slowdown in the destruction of the American workforce.