WASHINGTON – The number of U.S. workers filing first-time jobless claims fell 2.3 percent last week, in the third consecutive weekly decline, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration.
Initial claims for unemployment fell to a seasonally adjusted 425,000 in the week ended Aug. 23, a decline of 10,000 claims from the previous week’s upwardly revised 435,000 new claims, the report said. Compared with the 332,000 initial claims registered in the same week of 2007, however, new filings for unemployment benefits rose 28.0 percent.
Last week’s estimate matched the 425,000 new claims predicted in a Bloomberg News survey of 41 economists, whose median forecast called for claims to fall by 7,000, or 1.6 percent, from the preceding week’s original estimate of 432,000. (Their estimates for the week ended Aug. 23 ranged from 410,000 to 450,000.)
Yet the number of people receiving unemployment benefits continued to rise, the Employment and Training Administration said.
In the week ended Aug. 16 – the most recent for which such estimates are available – the jobless rolls swelled to a seasonally adjusted 3.423 million recipients. That estimate – the highest since Nov. 2003 – represented an increase of 64,000, or 1.9 percent, from the previous week’s revised 3.359 million insured unemployed.
Analysts credited the national increase in the total number of people receiving jobless benefits to the federal extension that took effect last month. Extended benefits also were available under state programs in Alaska and Rhode Island.
The insured unemployment rate nationwide (the share of the work force receiving unemployment benefits) was unchanged from the week before at 2.2 percent as the number of people staying on unemployment benefits edged up 9,347 to 3.17 million. A year earlier, the unadjusted rate had been 1.8 percent and the number of people receiving unemployment benefits had been 2.37 million.
Beyond Cash Donations: How New Forms of Giving Are Transforming Not-for-Profit Accounting
Evolving Funding Landscape for Not-for-Profits Not-for-profit organizations are being asked to do more with less,…
Learn More
In the week ended Aug. 9 – the most recent for which state figures are available – Puerto Rico had that week’s highest insured unemployment rate, at 4.9 percent. Filling out the Top 10 were New Jersey and Michigan at 3.4 percent; Pennsylvania at 3.3 percent; No. 5 Rhode Island at 3.3 percent; California, Massachusetts and Oregon, all at 3.2 percent; and Nevada and South Carolina, with insured jobless rates of 3.1 percent.
“The labor market may continue to weaken,” Russell Price, a senior economist at H&R Block Financial Advisors Inc. in Detroit, told Bloomberg News. “It’s become clear that second-half growth isn’t going to be as strong as the first half, so businesses are going to finally start to trim payrolls a little more.”
Additional information, including the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report, is available from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration at www.dol.gov.
