Weekly Jobless Claims Up Up Up

The weekly jobless claims for the week of August 15th rose to 574,000---That's up 15,000 from the prior week and higher than expected. This increased the 4 week moving average up 4,250 to 570,000 new jobless/week...

The report also showed that 6.24 million people are currently receiving unemployment insurance benefits.

Two other interesting tid-bits from the report include:

States reported 2,877,756 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending Aug. 1, an increase of 92,384 from the prior week. There were 1,406,779 claimants in the comparable week in 2008. EUC weekly claims include both first and second tier activity.

The highest insured unemployment rates in the week ending Aug. 1 were in Puerto Rico (7.3 percent), Oregon (6.2), Pennsylvania (6.1), Michigan (5.9), Nevada (5.9), Wisconsin (5.5), California (5.3), Connecticut (5.3), New Jersey (5.3), North Carolina (5.1), and South Carolina (5.1).