The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits increased more than expected last week, but that did not signal a material shift in the labor market amid temporary automobile plant closures and disruptions from Hurricane Beryl.
The weekly jobless claims report from the Labor Department on Thursday, however, suggested that it was getting harder for the unemployed to land new jobs relative to last year. Unemployment rolls swelled to the highest level in more than 2-1/2 years in the first week of July, in line with a recent increase in the jobless rate.
A loosening labor market and ebbing inflation position the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates in September, with financial markets anticipating additional cuts in November and December.
"Taking a step back from the noise in the data, jobless claims have drifted higher since the start of the year," said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. "We think the rise so far is consistent with a cooling labor market that is characterized more by a slower pace of hiring rather than by higher layoffs."
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-weekly-jobless-claims-increase-123935728.html