After reporting an unexpected drop in first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits in the previous week, the Labor Department released a report on Thursday showing that initial jobless claims rebounded by more than anticipated in the week ended June 15th.
The report said initial jobless claims climbed to 354,000, an increase of 18,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 336,000. Economists had expected jobless claims to edge up to 340,000 from the 334,000 originally reported for the previous week.
With the much bigger than expected increase, jobless claims partly offset the decreases seen in the two previous weeks.
The Labor Department said its less volatile four-week moving average edged up to 348,250, an increase of 2,500 from the previous week's revised average of 345,750.
Meanwhile, continuing claims, a reading on the number of people receiving ongoing unemployment assistance, dropped to 2.951 million in the week ended June 8th from the preceding week's revised level of 2.991 million.
The four-week moving average of continuing claims rose to 2,978,750, an increase of 7,000 from the preceding week's revised average of 2,971,750.
The report also said emergency unemployment claims fell to 1.68 million in the week ended June 1st from 1.70 million in the week ended May 25th.
Mei Li, Economic Analyst at FTN Financial, said, "Both continuing claims and emergency unemployment claims have decreased steadily since April and emergency claims reached the lowest since December 2008, a sign of stabilization and a potential pick-up in the labor market."
"As the Fed pointed out in the FOMC statement yesterday, the downside risk of the labor market has diminished, providing a benign foundation for future job growth," she added.
Earlier this month, the Labor Department released a separate report showing that U.S. employment increased by a little more than economists had anticipated in the month of May
The report said non-farm payroll employment rose by 175,000 jobs in May following a downwardly revised increase of 149,000 jobs in April.
Economists had been expecting employment to increase by about 167,000 jobs compared to the addition of 165,000 jobs originally reported for the previous month.
Despite the continued job growth, the unemployment rate edged up to 7.6 percent in May from 7.5 percent in April, reflecting an increase in the size of the labor force.
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