First-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits rose by more than expected in the week ended April 8th, according to a report released by the Labor Department on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The report said initial jobless claims climbed to 239,000, an increase of 11,000 from the previous week’s unrevised level of 228,000. Economists had expected jobless claims to rise to 232,000.<\/p>\n
The Labor Department said the less volatile four-week moving also edged up to 240,000, an increase of 2,250 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 237,750. <\/p>\n
“We expect claims to trend higher through the rest of the year and peak in Q4 as the economy<\/span> begins to emerge from a mild recession,” said Oren Klachkin, Lead U.S. Economist at Oxford Economics.<\/p>\n He added, “The upcoming labor market downturn will be modest since the drop in demand will be fairly modest and the labor pool will stay relatively small.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the report said continuing claims, a reading on the number of people receiving ongoing unemployment assistance, dipped by 13,000 to 1.810 million in the week ended April 1st.<\/p>\n The four-week moving average of continuing claims still rose to 1,813,500, an increase of 9,500 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 1,804,000.<\/p>\n Last Friday, the Labor Department released a separate report showing employment in the U.S. increased roughly in line with economist estimates in the month of March.<\/p>\n The report said non-farm payroll employment climbed by 236,000 jobs in March after jumping by an upwardly revised 326,000 jobs in February.<\/p>\n Economists had expected employment to rise by about 240,000 jobs compared to the addition of 311,000 jobs originally reported for the previous month.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Labor Department said the unemployment rate edged down to 3.5 percent in March from 3.6 percent in February. The unemployment rate was expected to be unchanged. <\/p>\n