The Department of Labor
reported Thursday morning that seasonally adjusted first-time claims for unemployment benefits for the week ending Aug. 25 was 374,000, the same as the revised number of claims from the previous week, originally reported as 372,000. A year ago at this time, claims were at 407,000.
The four-week running average that flattens volatility in the weekly reports rose to 370,250, an increase of 1,500 from the previous week's revised average. The consensus of economists surveyed in advance of the report was that the claims numbers would come in several thousand lower.
For the week ending Aug. 11, the number of people claiming benefits in all programs was 5,532,245, a decrease of 62,253 from the previous week.
The puts the claims numbers pretty much where they were in the middle of January and the middle of May. Jobless-benefits claims through mid-August are an indication that when next week's government report on new job creation for the month is released, the numbers will be about where they have been since March, well under the 200,000 to 250,000 needed to substantially reduce the unemployment rate. The monthly jobs report only includes data up to about the 12th of the preceding month, meaning that each report is actually a measurement of four or five weeks that straddle two months.
Meanwhile, in yet another week of mixed economic news, consumer spending rose 0.4 percent, which was in line with economists' forecasts, the first rise in three months and a sign that the spending that drives two-thirds of the economy may be loosening up in the third quarter. Consumer spending during the second quarter of 2012 was weak. That was a key reason the gross domestic product reported for the quarter was only 1.7 percent, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. In the first quarter, the economy grew at a faster, but still tepid, rate of 2 percent.
While consumer spending was up, consumer confidence is down, according to the monthly Conference Board report. In fact, consumer confidence is now at its lowest level since November 2011.