Weekly Jobless Claims Climb Higher in the Week Ending July 18th Streak of 15 Weeks of Declines Ends

The U.S. Department of Labor is reporting that an additional 1.416 million Americans made their initial filing for unemployment benefits during the week ending on Saturday, July 18th. An increase of 109,000 from the previous week’s revised level. It snaps a string of fifteenth straight week of declines, which dates back to the week ending March 28th, when it hit a record peak of 6.9 million. Claims continue to remain above 1 million. The 4-week moving average was 1,360,250, a decrease of 16,500 from the previous week’s revised average. This week’s new claims brought the seventeen-week total to 52.757 million. The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment, commonly known as continuing claims, during the week ending July 11 was 16,197,000, a decrease of 1,107,000 from the previous week’s revised level. Continuing claims remain below 20 million for the fifth week in a row. The 4-week moving average was 18,272,250, a decrease of 737,750 from the previous week’s revised average. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 11.1% for the week ending July 11th, a decrease of 0.7 percentage point from the previous week’s revised rate.