For 16 of the past 18 weeks, seasonally adjusted first-time claims for unemployment benefits have clocked in below 400,000. Today, the Labor Department
reported that for the week which ended March 3, claims rose to 362,000, up 8,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 354,000. The consensus forecast of analysts surveyed by Reuters had expected the weekly number to be 351,000.
The four-week moving average that most analysts prefer because it flattens volatility in the weekly figures was 355,000, up 250 from the previous week.
The total number of people claiming benefits in all state unemployment programs plus the federal emergency extended program for the week ended Feb. 18 was 7,387,648, a decrease of 111,222 from the previous week. That number can be expected to drop markedly over the next few months because of payroll tax-cut deal that will reduce eligibility for the extended program in those states with the worst jobless rates from 99 weeks to 63 weeks by Sept. 30.
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Meanwhile, Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that employers had announced job cuts of 51,728 in January, down from 53,486, or 3.3 percent, over January. But the cuts were 2 percent higher than those announced last February:
Layoffs were concentrated in the consumer products and transportation sectors in January and February. Last year, job cuts in the first two months of the year were dominated by the government sector.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its closely watched monthly jobs report Friday. The consensus forecast is that a seasonally adjusted 204,000 jobs were created in February. But the range of predictions by analysts surveyed by Bloomberg runs from 180,000 to 275,000. For January, the BLS reported 257,000 private-sector jobs had been created, but public-sector layoffs in state and local government had cut the gain to 243,000.
Some 12.8 million people remain unemployed, 5.5 million of them for six months or longer. The official "U3" unemployment rate, which has continued to drop over the past several months, was 8.3 percent. In addition, however, nearly 12 million are working in part-time jobs because they cannot find full-time work or have stopped looking for employment because they are too discouraged. Including those Americans, the "U6" unemployment/underemployed rate was 15.1 percent for January, a figure many analysts have long said better captures the actual situation.