The amount of jobless claims filed last week were much more than some economists had predicted.
They had expected the amount of claims to drop about 15,000 from last weeks claims that totaled 474,000. The prediction proved to be wrong because for the week ending Feb 20, the amount of claims rose more than 20,000 up to 496,000, according to today’s announcement by the Labor department.
Over the past two weeks the amount of jobless insurance claims filed rose about 12%.
The four week average for unemployment claims also rose 6,000 this week from the previous week were it stood at 467,000. Many professionals believe that the four week average is a much better number to figure the overall condition of the labor market.
Some economists believe that the very adverse weather conditions on the east-coast has played a major factor in this tally, especially in states and cities with high populations. Union jobs such as construction are being hit hard by the drastic weather conditions.
Also, the extreme weather conditions in some states have caused a major backlog in insurance claims that were not able to be processed. Many claims did not reach the Labor Department until this last week.
According to the most recent report that monitors continuing claims, the amount of continuing claims rose to 4,617,000 for the week ending February 13th. This tally includes people that have continued filing claims each week after their first initial claim.
But to the average person on Main Street, this comes to no surprise as the national unemployment rate remains at about 10%. The government’s efforts to make more jobs has proven to be fruitless so far.
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