on the day that president obama went to staten island to witness first hand the d destruction that hurricane sandy left on that part of the city. in another part of the city this happened. you wow. 439,000 unemployment cham claie filed last week. are you kidding is it up? my goodness. we had to call and say, is that number right? and it looks like it is right. are you kidding? there is foeing to be something. they are saying, this has something to do with sandy. i m sure. because the number is so much higher than expeced. you have been suspicious from
sinus and headache relief. on the day that president obama went to staten island to witness first hand the destruction that hurricane sandy left on that part of the city. in another part of the city this happened. you wow. 439,000 unemployment claims were filed last week. are you kidding is it up? my goodness. we had to call and say, is that number right? and it looks like it is right. are you kidding? there is going to be something. they are saying, this has something to do with sandy. i m sure. because the number is so much
late. here to react, governor of wisconsin, republican scott walker who joins us live. are you in vegas? i am. i m at the republican governors association. it s pretty early in the morning for a midwesterner. gretchen: i know. no doubt. i thought you were out there betting on the packers or something. let s get to these jobless numbers. that would be a safe bet, you know. gretchen: it would be, you know. let s get to these jobless claims numbers. a lot of people will be raising eyebrows high today that after the election, we go up to this whopping number 439,000. what do you make of it? well, real concerns about the numbers, certainly some will question the timing. but the bigger concern i think a lot of us have is what does it mean for the future? you got all this talk in washington about the fiscal cliff. that is a concern. but the bigger concern is how the politicians in our nation s capitol will try and tackle that and a lot of them are talk being a big tax increase. when
just on the rich, the top 2%. if we do that, we lose 200,000 jobs next year. factor that into the employment situation, gregg. it s not pretty. gregg: it is not. stuart varney, thanks very much. there is the number, a lot of zeros after that too. stuart, thanks very much. martha: put it in context for you. since december of 2007, weekly jobless claims stayed above 300,000. you can see the big spike in early 2009. economist say weekly claims must consistently fall below 375,000, which is shown by the yellow line there. you can see we bounced along it a little bit. and now you have this huge spike that we just got this morning. 439,000 in that recent surge. gregg: you know what? we re minutes away from the opening bell on wall street and the dow has really taken a dive since election day, dropping about 675 points.
subcommittee on answers he is look for. we ll talk to him coming up here on america s newsroom . gregg: hurricane sandy blamed on a big increase in weekly jobless claims. the number of americans filing for jobless benefits jumping by 78,000 to 439,000. there s the number on your screen. that is the highest level in a year and a half. stuart varney, anchor of varney & company on the fox business network. stu, this is huge compared to what they were expecting, right? you can t explain this huge number entirely on the storm, sandy. it is true that last week many people up and down the eastern seaboard were able to get out of their houses for the first time and go down and file. that accounts for some of this big increase. but gregg, there is a suspicion that the underlying trend is for higher and higher jobless pen fit claims because the economy appears to be getting weaker and weaker. we face tax increases next