Unemployment Claims Drop Slightly

The number of initial unemployment claims has been falling steadily for about a month now, but the job market remains stubbornly weak.

It's beginning to look like another Jobless Recovery, with a booming stock market, big Wall Street bonuses, and high unemployment.

Even Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner is complaining about the "deeply unfair" gap between the good times in the financial sector and hard times practically everywhere else -- and that includes a flat housing market threatened by even more home loan foreclosures.

Initial unemployment claims fell to a seasonally-adjusted 439,000 for the week ending March 20. That's a decrease of 6,000 from the revised rate for the week before, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The count of initial claims can jump wildly from week to week. But the four-week moving average, which evens out some of the volatility in the number of initial claims, also fell to 447,250, down from 454,000 the week before.