US initial jobless claims rise by 13,000

Americans lined up for unemployment benefits at an accelerated clip in the seven days ended 4 February.

According to the Labor Department, initial jobless claims rose by 13,000 week-on-week to 196,000, up from the prior week's nine-month low of 183,000 and above economists expectations for a reading of 190,000.

Continuing claims printed at 1.688m, up 38,000 week-on-week, while the four-week moving average for initial claims, which aims to strip out week-to-week volatility, declined from 191,750 a week earlier to 189,250.

The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.2%, an increase of 0.1% from the previous week's unrevised rate.

The largest increases in initial claims were in Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, and Wisconsin, while the largest decreases were in Kentucky, California, Ohio, Arkansas, and Michigan.

Commenting on the data, Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that jobless claims remained "very low" but believed that at the margin the non-seasonally adjusted figures supported his view that the relatively mild weather was a "big part of the story" behind the blowout non-farm payrolls report for January.

"Our take on the seasonals suggests that claims will be little changed over the next couple weeks, so further increases in claims would get our attention," he said.

"The bigger picture here, though, is that the surge in layoff announcements reported in the Challenger survey will pass through into claims by late winter/early spring, allowing for the usual lags."

For his part, Matthew Martin, US economist at Oxford Economics, said: "The low level of claims continues to signal a tight labor market, and workers are still finding it relatively easy secure employment.

"The resounding 517k jobs added in January corroborates the claims data, though we believe the surge overstates the strength in the job market as January frequently surprises to the upside. Regardless of any seasonal quirks, the labor market continues to defy expectations and remains resilient even as other measures of the economy have begun to trend downwards."

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com