WASHINGTON – The number of U.S. workers filing first-time jobless claims rose 0.2 percent last week to a seven-year high, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration.
Initial claims for unemployment benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 497,000 last week, an increase of 1,000 from the downwardly-revised 496,000 new claims of the week ended Sept. 20. Compared with the 324,000 initial claims registered in the same week of 2007, however, new filings for unemployment benefits soared 53.4 percent.
The new-claims estimate matched the median forecast from a Bloomberg News survey of 39 economists. (Their estimates for the week ended Sept. 27 ranged from 432,000 to 525,000 new jobless claims.)
So far this year, new claims have averaged 388,000 per week, an increase of 20.9 percent from the 321,000 new claims per week reported for all of 2007.
In the week ended Sept. 20 – the most recent for which such estimates are available – the insured unemployment rate nationwide (the share of the work force receiving unemployment benefits) was unchanged from the week before at 2.7 percent. A year earlier, the unadjusted rate had been 1.8 percent and the number of people receiving unemployment benefits had been 2.37 million.
Meanwhile, the number of people collecting unemployment benefits nationwide swelled to a seasonally adjusted 3.591 million recipients. That estimate – the highest since September 2003 – represented an increase of 48,000, or 1.35 percent, from the previous week’s revised 3.543 million insured unemployed. The Sept. 20 figure also was 1.036 million, or 40.5 percent, higher than the year-ago total of 2.555 million.
Analysts blamed the deepening economic slump, which spurred some employers to cut staff, along with the aftereffects of last month’s Gulf Coast storms. “It is estimated that the effects of Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana and the effects of Hurricane Ike in Texas added approximately 45,000 claims to the total,” the Employment and Training Administration said.
“The financial turmoil and panic of the past several weeks has clearly done substantial economic damage,” Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pa., told Bloomberg Radio. “This pretty much leaves little doubt that we’re in a recession.”
The number of people claiming extended jobless benefits under the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) – passed by Congress in July (READ MORE) – continued to rise, the most recent data show. Nationwide in the week ended Sept. 13, a total 1.432 million people were receiving EUC benefits; that represented an increase of 374,830 recipients, or 26.2 percent, from the week before.
Yet the extended jobless benefits available under state guidelines in Rhode Island (READ MORE) and Alaska declined slightly, today’s report said. In the week ended Sept. 13, extended benefits were being paid to 1,125 people, a decrease of 201 beneficiaries, or 0.2 percent, from the preceding week’s 1,326 extended jobless-benefit recipients, the report said.
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In the week ended Sept. 6 – the most recent for which state figures are available – new unemployment benefits claims increased in 17 states, led by Texas (+22,235) and Louisiana (+9,671), while declines were seen in 36 states, led by Kansas and South Carolina.
Puerto Rico had that week’s highest insured unemployment rate, at 5.2 percent. Filling out the Top 10 were Michigan (3.3 percent); California, New Jersey and Oregon (3.2 percent); Nevada (3.1 percent); Pennsylvania and South Carolina (3.0 percent); Rhode Island (2.8 percent); and Arkansas (2.7 percent).
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.
