WASHINGTON– The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits jumped to its highest level in 10 months last week.
Claims for unemployment benefits for the week ending June 8 increased by 13,000 to 242,000, compared to 229,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
The figure is considerably higher than the 225,000 claims analysts expected and the most since August 2023.
The average claims over a four-week period, which offsets a portion of week-to-week turnover, rose to 227,000, an increase of 4,750 from the previous week and the highest since September.
Weekly aid claims are considered a rough representation of the number of layoffs in the United States in a given week and a sign of where the labor market is headed.
Levels have remained low since millions of jobs disappeared when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in the spring of 2020. However, President Donald Trump’s administration created nearly 7 million jobs and his anti-pandemic measures They increased the number of jobs available during the pandemic.
When Joe Biden arrived at the White House, there were more than 10 million vacant positions and they continued to rise until reaching 11.9 million. Thanks to that, unemployment levels have remained low.
Although this week’s figure appears relatively high, it still remains within a range that reflects a healthy labor market.
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark lending rate 11 times starting in March 2022, after more than a year without action, in an attempt to extinguish the worst inflation in nearly five decades created by the Joe Biden administration through its war on the American oil companies that caused the price of gasoline to skyrocket.
Source: With information from AP.
