More people than expected filed for jobless claims last week

http://www.flickr.com/photos/labor2008/ / CC BY 2.0

BY KELLEN M. HENRY– MEDILL REPORTS

The unemployment see-saw continues amid uncertainty about when Americans will head back to work, a U.S. Department of Labor report indicated Thursday.

Last week, the number of people filing for unemployment claims rose, while the total number of people filing ongoing claims fell.

During the week ended Aug. 8 there were 558,000 initial unemployment claims, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week and much higher than the 545,000 expected, according to Bloomberg L.P. The four-week moving average, which smooths out volatility in the measurement, was 565,000, an increase of 8,500.

Though 6,202,000 filed for continued unemployment for the week of Aug. 1, the most recent data available, that number is a decline of 141,000 claims from the previous week. The four-week moving average was 6,259,250, a decline of 27,750.

Illinois continued to have a high level of unemployment, the ninth-highest nationally, with a rate of 5.3 percent as of the end of July.

However, the state was absent from the list of states with largest increases in initial claims for early August. Its initial claims actually decreased by 2,535 because of fewer layoffs in the trade, service and manufacturing industries, according to the Department of Labor.

Tags: jobs, layoffs, unemployment