Jobless claims up 12% in past 2 weeks

The number of unemployed Americans climbed more than 12% over the last two weeks. This may be contributed to the adverse weather conditions in the eastern part of the country. On Wednesday the Senate passed a 15 billion bill to spur job creation, and give businesses tax breaks fro hiring unemployed, but it does not extend unemployment benefits. If the application deadline is not extended more than 1 million people will run out of unemployment benefits by February 28th. Richard dye believes that with the improvement of weather in March, however, the rate of joblessness will improve (decrease).