Yet four-week average falls to lowest level since November 2007
By Jeffry Bartash, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The number of people who applied last week for unemployment benefits rose to the highest level in a month but remained near a post-recession low, the U.S. government said Thursday.
Initial jobless claims jumped by 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 336,000 in the week ended Aug. 17, the Labor Department said. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch expected claims to rise to 330,000 from a revised 323,000 in the prior week.
Yet the monthly average, a more reliable gauge than the volatile weekly number, fell by 2,250 to 330,500 and touched the lowest level since November 2007 — a month before the Great Recession started. The four-week average has fallen six straight weeks.
Yields on the 10-year Treasury note 10_YEAR +0.24% edged up a point to 2.907% — around the highest level in over two years.
The gradual decline in claims over the past year is largely a reflection of a slower pace of layoffs. Companies are not cutting as many workers these days after slashing their workforces during and immediately after the last recession.
Still, the jobs market has also perked up a bit. The U.S. economy has added an average 192,000 net jobs a month through the first seven months of 2013, the best stretch of hiring to start a year since 2006.
The nation has to add jobs at a much faster rate, however, to rapidly reduce the U.S. unemployment rate, now at 7.4%, and put millions of unemployed people back to work. Some 22 million Americans who want a full-time job still cannot find one.
Meanwhile, the number of people already receiving jobless benefits, known as continuing claims, increased by 29,000 to a seasonally adjusted 2.99 million in the week ended Aug. 10. Continuing claims are released with a two-week lag.
Initial claims from two weeks ago were revised up to 323,000 from an original reading of 320,000, based on more complete data collected at the state level.
Jeffry Bartash is a reporter for MarketWatch in Washington.
