MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US jobs market remains soft and unemployment claims rose in April

Long queues to claim unemployment benefits

The number of claims for US unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, pushed up by auto-plant shutdowns and other unusual events that seasonal variations failed to take into account, the Labour Department said.

Applications for jobless benefits jumped by 43,000 to 474,000 in the week ended April 30, the most since August, Labour Department figures showed Thursday. A spring break holiday in New York, a new emergency benefits program in Oregon and auto shutdowns caused by the disaster in Japan were the main reasons for the surge, a Labour Department spokesman said on releasing the data.

Employers added 185,000 workers to payrolls in April, fewer than in the prior month, and the unemployment rate held at 8.8%. The Labour Department revised the prior week’s figure up to 431,000 from an initially reported 429,000.

The spokesman also said that any claims filed by workers throughout the South that lost their jobs due to the storms that spawned tornados would probably be reflected in a different set of data rather than in the initial claims figures.

Another Labour Department report showed the productivity of U.S. workers slowed in the first quarter and labour costs rose as a growing economy prompted companies to boost employment.

The measure of employee output per hour increased at a 1.6% annual rate, after a 2.9% gain in the prior three months. Expenses per employee climbed at a 1% rate after dropping 1%.

The four-week moving average for jobless claims, a less- volatile measure, rose to 431,250 from 409,000.

The number of people continuing to collect jobless benefits rose by 74,000 in the week ended April 23 to 3.73 million. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs. Those who’ve used up their traditional benefits and are now collecting emergency and extended payments decreased by about 42,900 to 4.12 million in the week ended April 16.

While payrolls have grown each month since October, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on April 27 that central bankers would like to see more strength in the U.S. labour market, noting that a recovery has been “quite slow.”