Last week brought the announcement from the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics that another 652,000 Americans applied for their first jobless benefit last week; roughly double that of last year, and 8,000 more than analysts expected.

While the number applying for their first jobless benefit claim is likely not directly indicative of the state of the economy in itself — as it does not account for changing cultural effects or those who are finding new jobs (and thus, ceasing to receive benefits) — this staggering number has increased the “continuing claims” number by more than 100,000 for four of the last five weeks.

Quarter-on-quarter the fourth quarter of 2008 was, as announced by the Federal Bureau of Economic Analysis today, the worst quarter since 1982 with the economy shrinking more than 6 per cent.

“The decrease in real GDP in the fourth quarter primarily reflected negative contributions from exports, personal consumption expenditures, equipment and software, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by a positive contribution from federal government spending,” said the Bureau.

Despite the reports, markets closed up almost 200 points this afternoon — marking that these reports were quite anticipated by Wall Street.

The U.S. unemployment rate closed at 8.1 per cent last month, while the Canadian unemployment rate has been pegged at 7.1 per cent according to Statistics Canada. It is important to note that these two numbers cannot be directly compared due to differences in both the measuring techniques and the socioeconomic climates: there is a persistent two percentage point gap in the U.S./Canadian unemployment rate (generally, Canada is 2 points higher than the U.S.) due in part to more generous unemployment benefits, a higher degree of unionization and differences in measuring determining “discouraged” workers.

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