Did you hear that the number of initial jobless claims filed last week dropped by 1,000? Great news, eh? Too bad it was just another trick.

Stop us when this sounds familiar. Last week’s 365K number has been revised to 368K, which is where the expectations for this week’s print were. Instead, we got 367K claims this week, a 1K beat to expectations, which will be a 2K miss next week of course, but at least the pre-election propaganda media has their headline: “Initial Claims improve by 1,000.” And scene. Naturally, the same thing happened for continuing claims, which beat expectations of 3275K, printing at 3229K, with the last week’s print revised to 3290K from 3276K.

Read it all – it looks like they’re going to revise GDP downward. When you’re finished go check out the chart showing how long the unemployed are out of work. It’s depressing. And what is the president talking about? Gay marriage. And what is the media asking Mitt Romney about? Pot smoking.

Update: Lady Liberty linked – thanks!