Initial Jobless Claims Jump 20,000 to 362,000 in Week Ended Feb. 16

WASHINGTON — Initial claims for U.S. state unemployment benefits rose 20,000 to 362,000, a level above expectations for the Feb. 16 week and exactly the same as a year earlier, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

Forecasts in a MNI survey of economists had centered around a rebound in jobless claims to 352,000 from the 342,000 of the previous week, which was revised upward by 1,000.

A Labor Department analyst said that California's results were partially estimated, as is done routinely in a week with a holiday, and that Virginia provided its own estimate. Labor Department staff estimated the total for Hawaii and the District of Columbia.

A Labor Department analyst said there was nothing particularly unusual for the week, one of a string in which the seasonal factors bounce around. Now the seasonals become less volatile and the current week's holiday should be satisfactorily anticipated by its seasonal factor which will be applied to it in next week's report.

Seasonal adjustment factors expected unadjusted claims to fall by 9.2% or 33,000 and instead got a 4.1% decline, or 14,758. A year earlier the level for the Feb. 16 week was 346,659.

The state data released for the Feb. 9 week showed unadjusted initial claims increased in 11 states and decreased in 42. The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands are included in this data.

The initial claims seasonally adjusted 4-week moving average was 360,750 in the latest week, an increase of 8,000, the highest since the Jan. 5 week.

The level of continuing claims came in at 3.148 million after seasonal adjustment in the Feb. 9 week, an increase of 11,000.

The level of unadjusted continuing claims fell by 18,188 to 3,648,864 and remains below the 4,010,489 level in the comparable week a year ago.

The seasonally adjusted insured unemployment was unchanged at 2.4% in the Feb. 9 week and is still below the seasonally adjusted 2.7% rate in the comparable week a year earlier.

The unemployment rate among the insured labor force is well below that reported monthly by the Labor Department because claims are approved for the most part only for job losers, not the job leavers and labor force reentrants included in the monthly report.

The Labor Department said that the level of unadjusted Emergency Unemployment Compensation benefits claims fell by 232,319 in the Feb. 2 week, bringing that category's total to 1,849,056.

Extended benefits claims fell by 211 to 651 Feb. 2 week, still running off the final workers as the program has ended.

The Labor Department reported that a total of 5,610,327 persons claimed unemployment benefits in the Feb 2 week, a decrease of 307,848 from the previous week and still below the 7,486,681 persons in the comparable week a year ago. These data are not seasonally adjusted, and include regular state claims, federal employee claims, new veterans claims, the EUC and extended benefits programs, state additional benefits, and STC/Workshare claims.

Market News International is a real-time global news service for fixed-income and foreign exchange market professionals. See www.marketnews.com.

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