U.S. Weekly Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Climb To Eight-Month High

(RTTNews) - Following the substantial increase seen in the previous week, first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly saw some further upside in the week ended December 14th.

The Labor Department released a report on Thursday showing that initial jobless claims climbed to 379,000, an increase of 10,000 from the previous week's figure of 369,000. The revised figures showed an increase of 64,000 in the previous week.

The modest increase came as a surprise to economists, who had expected jobless claims to drop to 337,000 from the 368,000 originally reported for the previous week.

With the unexpected increase, jobless claims climbed further off the nearly three-month low set in the last week of November and reached their highest level since late March.

However, the Labor Department suggested that the data continued to reflect the difficulty of performing seasonal adjustments around the holidays.

The report said the less volatile four-week moving average rose to 343,500, an increase of 13,250 from the previous week's revised average of 330,250.

Continuing claims, a reading on the number of people receiving ongoing unemployment assistance, also jumped to 2.884 million in the week ended December 7th from the preceding week's revised level of 2.790 million.

The four-week moving average of continuing claims edged up to 2,799,000, an increase of 4,250 from the preceding week's revised average of 2,794,750.