Lots of Americans are regularly filling claims for unemployment insurance. Labour department said that continues to drag on the labor market’s recovery.
The four-week average of claims rose to 475,500 last week, up from 470,500 a week earlier.
Economists expecting that this figure 4,500,000 remain unchanged
“Continuing claims represent the pool of workers who have been unable to get back into the labor market quickly,” said Robert Dye, senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group. “Long-term unemployment remains a significant problem and will remain a drag on the economy, as it has for some time now.”
Dye said, “The climate for hiring is highly uncertain at small businesses, with health care legislation still pending and tax policies in flux. I think it will take months before we see hiring there.”
“Initial claims are improving, but they are stalling at the current level and are still too high to create sustained job growth,” Vitner said. “In a healthy economy that is functioning normally, jobless claims need to come to closer to 350,000.”
“Excluding any Census hiring, we’ll be hard pressed to see job growth in March. There’s a high probability that the unemployment rate will rise again because hiring is not picking up fast enough, and layoffs are not slowing down enough,”
President Barack Obama, who has set a goal of doubling U.S. exports to more than $3 trillion over the next five years to help create two million jobs, laid out a plan to boost U.S. exports.
James O’Sullivan, global chief economist at MF Global Ltd. Said in New York, “The net rise in the last two months was because of temporary factors, notably weather effects. Claims will likely have to resume a downward trend if payrolls are to improve, which we think will happen.”
“We are seeing a very broad uplift globally” in demand, John Campagnino, director of worldwide recruiting, said in a March 3 interview. He said the trend “brings us right back to the pre-recession levels.”
“At this stage, it is difficult to assess whether the declines are the result of folks finding new jobs or merely exhausting benefits,” Neil Rutta of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch wrote in a report.
Employers have cut 36,000 jobs, less than analysts expected, and excluding the impact of the snowstorms that hit the East Coast last month,
The nation has lost 8.4 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Many economists expect the unemployment rate to remain above 9.5 percent through the end of this year. Some companies are still cutting workers. Oil producer Chevron Corp. said Tuesday that it will cut about 2,000 jobs this year.