The pace of workers filing for unemployment claims picked up last week and was a bit higher than Wall Street had been expecting.
Jobless claims totaled 742,000 for the week, ahead of the 710,000 estimate from economists surveyed by Dow Jones, according to the Labor Department.
That total also represented an acceleration from the previous week’s total of 709,000 and a continuation of the job market struggles since the coronavirus pandemic hit in early March.
The week-over-week increase was the first after four straight weeks of decline. Even with the increase for the most recent period, the four-week moving average, which smooths volatility in the numbers, decreased 13,750 to 742,00.
As has been the pattern over the past several months, there was some good news within the elevated level of filings.
Continued claims, which trail by a week, took another substantial drop, falling 429,000 to 6.37 million, a fresh pandemic-era low. The insured unemployment rate, which is a simple calculation of those getting benefits against the total labor force, also continued to decline, falling to 4.3%.
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