U.S. Jobless Claims Rise More Than Expected To Six-Week High

(RTTNews) - First-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits rose by more than expected in the week ended August 9th, according to a report released by the Labor Department on Thursday, with claims rising to their highest level in six weeks.

The report said initial jobless claims climbed to 311,000, an increase of 21,000 from the previous week's revised level of 290,000.

Economists had been expecting jobless claims to edge up to 295,000 from the 289,000 originally reported for the previous week.

With the bigger than expected increase, jobless claims reached their highest level since hitting 316,000 in the week ended June 28th.

The Labor Department also said the four-week moving average edged up to 295,750, an increase of 2,000 from the previous week's revised average of 293,750.

The modest increase lifted the less volatile four-week moving average off the eight-year low set in the previous week.

Additionally, the report said continuing claims, a reading on the number of people receiving ongoing unemployment assistance, climbed to 2.544 million in the week ended August 2nd from the preceding week's revised level of 2.519 million.

The four-week moving average of continuing claims also rose to 2,528,250, an increase of 9,000 from the previous week's revised average of 2,519,250.

Peter Boockvar, managing director at the Lindsey Group, said, "Bottom line, while claims are higher than forecasted, it's likely due to some mean reversion after the July seasonal issues. The 4 week average is still around the lowest level since 2006."

"While it would be nice to just look at the better labor market data and use that as a backdrop for investing, it's unfortunately not the world we live in because the Fed has so immersed themselves into our markets and economy," he added.

Early this month, the Labor Department released a separate report showing continued job growth in the month of July, although the pace of growth fell short of economist estimates.

The report said non-farm payroll employment increased by 209,000 jobs in July after jumping by an upwardly revised 298,000 jobs in June. Economists had been expecting employment to climb by about 233,000 jobs.

Despite the continued job growth, the Labor Department also said the unemployment rate unexpectedly edged up to 6.2 percent in July from a nearly six-year low of 6.1 percent in June.

However, the uptick by the unemployment rate was largely due to an increase in the size of the labor force, which rose by 329,000.