A day ahead of tomorrow's monthly jobs report, the Labor Department released a report on Thursday showing that first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits rose more than expected in the week ended August 29th.
The report said initial jobless claims climbed to 282,000, an increase of 12,000 from the previous week's revised level of 270,000.
Economists had expected jobless claims to edge up to 273,000 from the 271,000 originally reported for the previous week.
With the bigger than expected increase, jobless claims reached their highest level since hitting 296,000 in the week ended July 4th.
The Labor Department said the less volatile four-week moving average also rose to 275,500, an increase of 3,250 from the previous week's revised average of 272,250.
Meanwhile, the report said continuing claims, a reading on the number of people receiving ongoing unemployment assistance, dropped by 9,000 to 2.257 million in the week ended August 22nd.
The four-week moving average of continuing claims edged down to 2,264,250, a decrease of 250 from the previous week's revised average of 2,264,500.
The release of the weekly jobless claims data comes a day ahead of the release of the Labor Department's more closely watched monthly jobs report on Friday.
Economists expect the report to show an increase of about 223,000 jobs in August following the addition of 215,000 jobs in July. The unemployment rate is expected to dip to 5.2 percent from 5.3 percent.
The monthly jobs data could have a significant impact on the outlook for whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its meeting later this month.
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