Jobless Claims Rise Again

You can put that champagne away. The Department of Labor's weekly jobs report isn't good news. Seasonally adjusted jobless claims increased last week by 15,000 from 561,000 to 576,000. And the news gets worse: continuing claims also increased for the prior week ending August 8th by 2,000 to 6,241,000.

Here's a nice graph from Calculated Risk showing weekly jobless claims on a historical basis:

We're certainly still lower than the peak, but economists can't be pleased to hear this number is increasing again, reversing the downward trend. These numbers might also be even more optimistic than they appear as unemployment benefits for some unemployed Americans begin to run out. This statistic is based on how many Americans are filing for unemployment benefits, not the actual number of unemployed.