Jobless Claims Climb a Bit
WASHINGTON--New claims for unemployment benefits ticked up last week after the previous week's steep drop hinted at hope for the U.S. jobs market.</br></br>Initial jobless claims rose by 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 401,000 for the week ended Oct. 1, the Labor Department said Thursday. Claims filed in the previous week had dropped by 33,000, the sharpest decline in more than four months.</br></br>The four-week moving average of new claims, a more reliable indicator of the labor market's performance because it smooths out volatile weekly figures, fell by 4,000 to 414,000.</br></br>The figures suggest the labor market is stabilizing after the bad claim numbers between mid-August and mid-September. They indicate that at summer's end, the U.S. economy hit a soft patch but didn't return to recession. Most companies seem to be in wait-and-see mode, reluctant to ramp up hiring, but loath to make big layoffs.</br></br>"The unemployment rate may be stubbornly high at 9.1%, but it could be worse, it could be rising which would mean we really were in a recession," Chris Rupkey, economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in New York, wrote in a note.