jobless recovery

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.

Big news on unemployment: the unemployment rate stayed put at 9.7 percent in February, according to today's release from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That's a pleasant surprise. Economists expected the unemployment rate to rise to 9.8 percent, after winter storms in February kept many construction and retail workers home.

But if you are among the many people worried about hordes of unemployed borrowers falling further behind in their mortgage payments, potentially leading to millions of new home loan foreclosures later this year, then today's news provides little reassurance.

The economy is strengthening in most parts of the U.S. -- but the recovery isn't translating into new jobs, according to the Beige Book report released today by the Federal Reserve.

That doesn't bode well for the housing market, since long term unemployment is one of the top reasons homeowners are still losing their homes to foreclosure, and foreclosure is still the biggest threat on the horizon for the housing recovery, according to many experts.

But the report showed strengthening demand in the residential real estate market -- at least for low-priced homes.