Hold on to Your Meat Packing Plant Job    The most interesting news today was the unemployment numbers; the U.S. Department of Labor announced that for last week, initial claims for unemployment benefits was 3,283,000, an increase of 3,001,000 from the previous week's revised level. Not surprisingly that is the largest number in history – the previous high was 695,000 in October of 1982, about 21 percent of last week’s claims. However, you can bet that not many of those claims were filed from people losing jobs in the meat packing sector. All the major packers have increased hourly rate for the next several weeks (typically through April) and are paying attendance bonuses and incentives to keep operations moving volu...

TAGS – Livestock, North America