WASHINGTON – The number of U.S. workers filing first-time jobless claims rose 6.2 percent last week, according to figures released today by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration.
Initial claims for unemployment rose to a seasonally adjusted 378,000 in the week ended March 15, an increase of 22,000 from the previous week’s revised 356,000 new filings. Compared with the 277,187 initial claims registered in the same week of 2007, new jobless filings rose 36.4 percent.
A strike last week at General Motors Corp.’s largest supplier of axles, which shut down or slowed production at several GM plants and other parts suppliers, contributed to the decline, a Labor Department official told Bloomberg News.
Analysts had expected 360,000 new claims in the week ended March 15 – an increase of 2.0 percent from the 353,000 initially reported the week before – based on the median forecast from a Bloomberg survey of 39 economists. (Their estimates ranged from 345,000 new claims to 380,000.)
So far this year, initial jobless claims have averaged 349,000 per week, up from 322,000 per week in all of 2007, the ETA said.
“This is pretty much what it looks like heading into recession,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in New York, told Bloomberg Television. “It’s a bad number for the Fed. This is something that might keep them cutting rates”
The nation’s insured unemployment rate rose to 2.2 percent in the week ended March 8 from 2.1 percent the week before, as the number of people staying on unemployment benefits rose to 2.865 million – the highest since August 2004, Bloomberg said.
In the week ended March 1 – the most recent for which state figures are available – Alaska had the highest insured unemployment rate, at 5.0 percent, Michigan was No. 2 at 4.3 percent, while Rhode Island tied with Pennsylvania for No. 3 at 4.0 percent and Massachusetts and California were tied for 10th with a jobless rate of 3.4 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.
