Jobless Claims Rise by 12,000 Last Week
First-time jobless claims climbed 12,000 to 293,000 in the week ended Sept. 20, the Labor Department reported.
The median forecast of 46 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for 296,000. Claims reached a 14-year low of 279,000 in mid-July.
Firings are hovering near decade lows and companies are hiring in anticipation of a sustained pickup in household spending. Still missing from the equation are bigger wage gains, which would shift the economic expansion into higher gear.
“This is all good news,” said Ray Stone, managing director at Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey, who forecast a rise in claims to 293,000. “The labor market is doing pretty good.”
Estimates in the Bloomberg survey ranged from 275,000 to 320,000.
Demand for all durable goods, those meant to last at least three years, slumped a record 18.2 %, reflecting a payback in commercial aircraft after plane bookings jumped in July, the report also showed.
No states estimated data last week and there was nothing unusual in the report, a Labor Department spokesman said as the jobless claims data were released.
The four-week average of applications, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, fell to 298,500 from 299,750 in the prior period.
The number of people continuing to receive benefits rose by 7,000 to 2.44 million in the week ended Sept. 13. The unemployment rate among people eligible for benefits held at 1.8 % during that period, the report showed.
After a six-month hiring burst that put more than 1.4 million Americans to work in the first half of the year, payroll growth slowed to 142,000 in August, the smallest monthly gain this year. Average hourly earnings rose 0.2 % last month, and grew 2.1 % since August 2013, barely exceeding inflation.
