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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndiana reported the biggest increase among states in new jobless claims
for the week ending March 7, with a jump of more than 5,500, which it
attributed to layoffs in the auto and manufacturing industries.
Nationally, new jobless claims fell more than expected last week, but continuing claims set a record for the eighth straight week and few economists expect the labor market to improve anytime soon.
“We’re continuing to see a decline in manufacturing, retail, consistent with much of the nation, especially the industrial Midwest,” said Indiana Department of Workforce Development spokesman Marc Lotter. “We’ve also continued to see increased claims in the [recreational vehicle] industry as it continues to consolidate, especially in northern Indiana.”
Indiana had about twice as many claims as it did this time a year ago, he said.
Lotter said Indiana’s new claims jumped about 5,600 from the previous week and totaled about 163,000 continued claims.
The
next largest increases were in Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida and
Michigan.
The U.S. Labor Department said today that initial requests for unemployment insurance dropped to a seasonally adjusted 646,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 658,000. That was better than analysts’ expectations.
But continuing claims jumped 185,000, to a seasonally adjusted 5.47 million, another record-high and more than the roughly 5.33 million that economists expected.
The four-week average of claims rose to 654,750, the highest since October 1982, when the economy was emerging from a steep recession, though the labor force has grown by about half since then.
Economists said the signs of life that have cropped up in other areas of the economy in the past week, such as upticks in retail sales and housing starts, aren’t yet apparent in the labor market.
Initial claims have topped 600,000 for seven straight weeks, a level that many economists say is consistent with another huge drop in net payrolls when the Labor Department issues its monthly employment report next month.
Net job losses could top 700,000 in March, Shepherdson said, which would bring total losses to above 5 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007.
The job market has been hammered as employers, squeezed by reductions in consumer and business spending, cut their work forces. The unemployment rate reached 8.1 percent last month, the highest in more than 25 years. Many economists expect the rate could reach 10 percent by the end of this year.
As a proportion of the work force, the number of Americans on the jobless benefit rolls is the highest since June 1983. The 5.47 million continuing claims also were up substantially from a year ago, when only about 2.85 million people were continuing to receive unemployment checks.
Among states, the biggest drop was in New York, which had 11,218 fewer claims as a result of fewer layoffs in the service and transportation industries. Connecticut, Tennessee, California and Oregon had the next largest declines.
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