More Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week as California continued to work through a backlog, indicating it will take time to gauge the impact of the federal shutdown. Jobless claims decreased by 15,000 to 358,000 in the week ended Oct. 12 from a revised 373,000 in the prior period, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 46 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for an decrease to 335,000. Applications in California remained elevated and the total also included some non-federal workers dismissed due to the gridlock in Washington, a Labor Department spokesman said as the figures were released to the press. The legislation passed by Congress last night to raise the debt ceiling and fund the government into 2014 will bring hundreds of thousands of federal workers back to their jobs and may also prompt the recall of non-federal contractors that had been let go. Even so, labor market progress may be slowed by the infighting in Washington as employers wait to see how the economy has been affected. “Uncertainty around the future of policy is having an impact, even if we’re not in the middle of a crisis,� Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities LLC, said in an interview before the report. While the claims data continued to be released during the lapse in appropriations, the shutdown has delayed the Labor Department’s September employment report and other government data releases. Federal workers filed about 70,000 claims for jobless benefits two weeks ago, today’s figures also showed. Those were tallied in a separate category and didn’t influence the headline reading, though contractors’ furloughs will count, a Labor Department spokesman said. It was difficult to estimate the number of non-federal workers who filed last week, the official also said. Although the gains in states last week was smaller than two weeks ago when about 15,000 applications resulted from furloughs of government contractors, he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Victoria Stilwell in Washington at vstilwell1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net

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