The website of the federal agency that reports the number of people who apply for unemployment benefits each week shows that layoffs stayed quite low during the middle of the government shutdown. But that's all it really tells us. Initial jobless claims totaled 232,000 in the week of Oct. 18, according to an obscure Labor Department database that lists the record of claims going back to 1967. The database does not include missing jobless-claims figures for the three weeks prior to Oct. 18 or the three weeks after that date. Typically, the Labor Department would inform the public ahead of time about when such data ... (full story)