More signs of the “recovery” the administration is bragging about:

1. “WASHINGTON (AP) – The number of people applying for unemployment benefits surged last week to the highest level in eight months, a troubling sign a day ahead of the government’s report on April unemployment.

“The Labor Department said Thursday that applications rose by 43,000 to a seasonally adjusted [read “fudged”] 474,000 last week …

“Applications have jumped 89,000, or 23 percent, in the past month …

“‘The trend is clearly upward, so that’s disconcerting,’ said Kurt Karl, chief U.S. economist for Swiss Re. ‘When you get three or four weeks in a row of special factors, they’re no longer special.'”

2. “THE WALL STREET JOURNAL –

“Number of the Week: Millions Set to Lose Unemployment Benefits –

“5.5 million: Americans unemployed and not receiving benefits –

“The job market may be on the mend (?) but that’s not much consolation to millions of Americans facing a frightening deadline: the end of their unemployment benefits …

“Many Americans are simply running out of time. As of March, about 14 million people were unemployed and looking for work … about 8.5 were receiving some kind of unemployment benefits, according to the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration. That leaves about 5.5 million unemployed without benefits, up 1.4 million from a year earlier.

“For the more than 4 million Americans still receiving extended benefits, the picture isn’t encouraging. The longer they’ve been out of work, the harder it is to find a job. They’ve typically been unemployed for at least 26 weeks, and may have been out of work for as long as 99 weeks, which for many people is the limit.

“In the coming months, hundreds of thousands more will drop off the unemployment rolls. The number of people using up their 26 weeks of unemployment payments peaked in August 2009 at nearly 800,000 a month. That means a lot of people should be hitting their 99-week limit right about now. And unless Congress does something unexpected, more people with shorter bouts of unemployment will join them as the government phases out extended benefits next year.” –

Here’s “something unexpected” Congress could do. Reopen the shuttered shipyards. Whatever one may think of FDR, that’s what he did to create millions of jobs and end the Great Depression.