Jobless claims at highest level since February, surpassing the 200,000 mark

Due to continuous labor shortage and increasing inflation, the number of American filing for unemployment aid drastically increased in the previous week, hitting the highest numbers since February.

According to the figures released by Labor Department on Thursday, the number of applications for unemployment benefits has seen a sharp rise as it broke the estimates forecast made by Refinitiv analysts of 182,000.

It touched the 200,000 mark on the week ended April 30, following the 181,000 mark, which was the number just a week earlier to it.


But to a surprise, there is a decrease of 1.38 million, which is about 19,000 Americans who used to receive unemployment aid consecutively.

Earlier this week, it was also reported by the Labor Department that in March, about 3% of the entire workforce, which is roughly 4.5 million Americans, had quit their jobs.

When compared with the pre-pandemic levels, then it used to hover around 3.6 million, which is significantly less than 4.5 million. But if it is compared with February, it's up by just a minimal margin of 0.1 million as in February it was around 4.4 million.

Meanwhile, by the end of March, the job opening had risen to 11.5 million.

The report also highlighted the fact that there is a rise in labor costs. Still, the productivity of labor rather than increasing has seen the steepest fall since 1947, and due to these reasons, there can be a spike in inflation. Businesses can be under pressure from wage hikes, which may further skyrocket inflation.

Nonfarm productivity, which is used to measure the hourly output per worker, has also come down to an annualized rate of around 7.5% during the first three months of this year. Data for the end of 2021 was also revised slightly lower to show that productivity grew at a 6.3% rate, down from the originally reported 6.6%.