New weekly US jobs claims post surprise rise

WASHINGTON (AFP) – New claims for unemployment insurance benefits in the United States unexpectedly rose last week, government data showed Thursday in a mixed report on the troubled labor market.

Initial jobless claims increased by 18,000 to a seasonally adjusted 460,000 in the week ending April 3, the Labor Department said, revising slightly upward the prior week’s reading to 442,000.

The rise surprised most analysts who had expected new claims to fall to 435,000 and snap two weeks of declines.

The headline figure was the highest number of new claims since February 27. Since starting a downward trend in late March 2009, claims have risen in eight of the past 14 weeks this year.

“Though this reversed some of the recent improvement, it should not be cause for alarm, as claims tend to be more volatile around holidays; the latest data point coincided with the week leading up to Easter,” said Andrew Gledhill at Moody’s Economy.com.

“This week’s increase in initial claims should not be seen as a reason to doubt that the slower layoff trend is persisting.”

According to a four-week moving average, which smooths some volatility in the weekly figures, new claims rose 0.5 percent to 450,250.

However, the weekly Labor Department report also included signs of slight improvement in the jobs market, where nearly one in 10 workers is unemployed.

For the week ending March 27, the insured unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, down 0.1 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.6 percent.

The number of those receiving jobless benefits, known as continuing claims, fell 2.8 percent to 4,550,000, while the four-week moving average dropped 0.8 percent to 4,648,250.

Several factors made last week’s seasonally adjusted data a bit trickier to compute, including the end of the quarter on March 31, a holiday in California, and the volatility of the Easter holiday, a Labor Department official said.

Since the fiscal year began on October 1, the average number of those on the unemployment rolls was 5.236 million.

High unemployment poses a challenge to the economy’s nascent recovery from the worst recession in decades. Jobs creation is widely expected to lag economic growth, which emerged in mid-2009 after a full year of contraction.

The initial claims report followed key March jobs data issued by the Labor Department on Friday, which showed the economy created 162,000 jobs, the biggest increase in three years, while the unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent.

According to the closely watched monthly report, the number of people who have not worked in more than six months rose by 414,000 in March, to 6.5 million people.

Since the recession began in December 2007, about eight million Americans have lost their jobs.

Source: news.yahoo.com