The number of Americans filing for unemployment aid for the week ending June 6 rose by 4,000 to 229,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s the most since early February, before the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran, but still considered a healthy level. It’s also more than the 216,000 new applications forecast by analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet.
Weekly filings for unemployment benefits are considered a proxy for U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.
The four-week moving average of jobless claims, which softens some of the weekly volatility, rose by 4,250 to 219,000.
The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending May 30 jumped by 24,000 to 1.8 million, slightly more than analysts predicted.