After reporting modest increases in first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits over the past few weeks, the Labor Department released a report on Thursday unexpectedly showing another uptick in initial jobless claims in the week ended August 15th.
The Labor Department said initial jobless claims crept up to 277,000, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 273,000.
The continued increase came as a surprise to economists, who had expected jobless claims to edge down to 270,000 from the 274,000 originally reported for the previous week.
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