The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits increased just 4,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 352,000. The slight gain kept applications at a level consistent with solid hiring and suggests March's sluggish hiring may be temporary.
The Labor Department report released Thursday also noted that the four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose to 361,250.
Applications are a proxy for layoffs. They jumped three weeks ago to a four-month high, but then plummeted the following week. The sharp fluctuations reflected volatility around the Easter holiday, department officials said. Overall, applications have declined slightly since January.
Job growth slowed sharply in March. Employers added only 88,000 jobs last month, much lower than the average monthly gain of 220,000 from November through February.
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The drop in applications is among the reasons many economists predict job growth rebounded this month, to around 150,000 net jobs.
Declines in applications signal that companies are laying off fewer workers. But layoffs are only half of the equation. Businesses also need to be confident enough in the economic outlook to add more jobs.
The unemployment rate fell to 7.6 percent in March, down from 7.7 percent in February. Still, the drop occurred because more people out of work stopped looking for jobs. The government doesn't count people as unemployed unless they are actively looking for work.
The economy is expected to grow at a much quicker pace in the January-March quarter than in the final three months of last year. Most economists forecast growth could top an annual rate of 3 percent in the first quarter, up from just 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter.
But many analysts now expect growth will slow in the April-June quarter, mostly because across-the-board government spending cuts kicked in March 1. That may have made some businesses nervous about hiring last month
By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER
AP Economics Writer
(AP:WASHINGTON)
You must be in bed w/the DC bureaucrats on this. Those of us who have both a brain that's functioning and are out of work know a different reality. I tuned 70 recently, had my own contracting business for more than 50 years, and can tell you this is the WORST recession [if that's what it is] I've experienced. And I'm in Victoria, BC, where we're supposed to have been better off the past several years!
In the last Great Depression, it took several years before the feral gubbmints of the world FINALLY admitted their failure to manage their economies. US farmers had been the first victims, starting their Great Depression in 1919, leading to utter collapse before the 1929 Stock Market crash. Goldman Sachs and other PoS market-maker/manipulators fled six months earlier, leaving the sheeple and middle-class to bear the 90% of the Crash, just as today the same scenario is played out. It happens every 70 years, big-time, as the cycles of usury & interest come together to defraud and deplete the wage slaves that create the wealth the 1% then takes w/o even a "Thank you!"