Pasadena, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/20/2010 -- 500,000 Americans filed for initial unemployment claims last week. The figure is the highest in the last nine months. The news immediately resulted in a decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Although the claims figure is down from its peak of 650,000 in March 2009, it was expected to go down not and not up by this margin. This means that not only are private businesses not hiring, but they are laying off workers in an uncertain economy. The Labor Department said one of the reasons for this was that the construction sector was shedding workers because of a slump in demand. The state and local governments are also cutting jobs to reduce their budget deficits.

In spite of the grim news of the unemployment situation, A. Harrison Barnes strikes a note of optimism. Barnes runs the job search engine Hound. “I read about the economy too, but my company has been able to come up with over a 22,000 jobs in a day. So there are employers who are hiring all over the country”.