WASHINGTON — Initial claims U.S. state unemployment benefits rose by 10,000 to 233,000 in the October 21 week, below the 235,000 level expected, data released by the Labor Department Thursday showed.
Claims from the October 14 survey week was revised up by 1,000 to 223,000, still showing the hurricanes effect has continued to disappear from the data.
The four-week moving average for initial claims, a better measure of the underlying trend of the data, fell by 9,000 to 239,500 in the October 21 week. If the number of headline claims does not change next week and there are no revisions to data from the past four weeks, the four-week average will fall by 6,250 as the 258,000 level in the September 30 week rolls out of the calculation.
Seasonal adjustment factors had expected an increase of 0.1%, or 223, in unadjusted claims. Instead, unadjusted claims rose by 4.5%, or 9,257 to 214,794. The current week's level is well below the 237,314 level in the comparable week a year ago.
The level of continuing claims fell by 3,000 to 1.893 million in the October 14 employment survey week, down 18,000 from the 1.911 million level in the September 16 employment survey week, suggesting October payrolls could see a bounce back from September data.
The seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate 1.3% in the October 14 survey week. The current week's rate is down from 1.5% in the same week a year earlier.
The unemployment rate among the insured labor force is well below that reported monthly by the Labor Department because claims are approved for the most part only for job losers, not the job leavers and labor force reentrants included in the monthly report.
