WASHINGTON – Initial claims for U.S. state unemployment benefits rose by 3,000 to 241,000 in the June 17 employment survey week, as expected following a small upward revision to the claims level in the previous week, data released by the Labor Department Thursday showed.
The current week's claims level is up 8,000 from the 233,000 level in the May 13 employment survey week, a small negative for June payrolls.
Still, the claims data are only marginally above their recent lows and remain well below their year ago levels, indicating that the pace of layoffs remains low.
The four-week moving average for initial claims, a better measure of the underlying trend of the data, rose by 1,500 to 244,750 in the June 17 week, a fourth straight increase.
However, 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 3,500 as the 255,000 level in the May 27 week rolls out of the calculation.
Seasonal adjustment factors had expected a decrease of 3.8%, or 8,806, in unadjusted claims in the week. Instead, unadjusted claims fell by 5,724 to 228,461 and were well below the 247,968 level in the comparable week a year ago.
The level of continuing claims rose by 8,000 to 1.944 million in the June 10 week, while the four-week moving average for continuing claims rose by 5,000 to 1.932 million.
The seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate held steady at 1.4% in the June 10 week for the tenth straight week. The current week's rate is down from 1.6% 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.
