US Jobless Claims Went Up to 313,000 This Week

Recent reports show that more Americans have sought unemployment aid last week, even though the number of job applications was still consisted and companies were steady hiring.

According to a statement released by the Labor Department on Thursday, weekly jobs applications have gone up by 31,000 which led to a total of 313,000. The applications claims have not been this high in more than six weeks, according to the analysts.

Also, the four-week average increased by 11,500, reaching approximately 294,000.
The analysts say that job applications are a proxy for layoffs. Reports show that the average has been close or below 300,000 since last September. This was a new record number which suggests that companies are hanging on to their employees and are even considering increasing the number of hiring.

Derek Lindsey, economist for BNP Paribas, explained that the fact that there was an unexpected increase of jobless claims, the trend is still a consistent one, suggesting that the US labor market is still improving.
Jim O’Sullivan, an economy analyst for High Frequency Economics, said the state of the current four-week average is very similar to the one that occurred in the last three months of 2014.
O’Sullivan noted that employers added approximately 324,000 jobs on a monthly average in the fourth quarter of last year.
National statistics have shown that US employers have added more than 1 million jobs in a very short three-month timeline, from November to January 2014, which has not happened since 1997.

Also, in the past year, more than 3.3 million jobs have been added, which helped lower the unemployment rate to 5.7% in January. It was an improvement from the 6.6% that was in January 2014.

The recent strong jobs gains have started to show signs of lifting paychecks for more employees.
The average hourly pay increased by 0.5% in January, which is the most in approximately 6 years, according to the Labor Department.

This means that employers are finally starting to feel the need to increase the wages so that they can attract new employees and keep the ones who are already working for them.
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