US weekly jobless claims highest since July 2015

The number of Americans who filed for weekly unemployment benefits has reached the highest level since July 2015, amid a sharp economic slowdown and major stock market selloff.

The number of jobless claims in the week ending on January 16 increased by 10,000, reaching a seasonally adjusted 293,000, a six-month high, the US Labor Department said Thursday.

In a survey by the Wall Street Journal, economists had forecast 277,000 new applications for unemployment benefits last week.

Claims for the preceding week reached 283,000, revised down by 1,000 from the 284,000 that were initially reported.

The rising jobless benefits suggest some loss of momentum in the US labor market.

"Our first threshold of concern on payrolls would be a four-week average above 325,000, which would signal to us a significant pickup in layoff activity," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York.

The four-week moving average of claims, which smoothes out often volatile weekly data, also showed an increase by 6,500, reaching 285,000. That is the highest figure of jobless claims since last April.

Initial claims have seen upticks during three of the last four weeks, which is partly attributable to the typically volatile holiday period, when many temporary retail employees are laid off.

The new data showed that the number of continuing unemployment benefit claims, those received by workers for more than a week, shrunk by 56,000 to 2,208,000 in the week ended January 9.

Jobless claims in the US have been mostly trending down since the recession ended in 2009. The fewest first-time applications for unemployment benefits since 1973 were filed last year.

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