First-time claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly to 304,000 for the week ending Feb. 7, the Department of Labor reported Thursday.
Initial claims were a significant jump up from the revised 279,000 a week before, and well above Wall Street economists’ expectations for 290,000.
The four-week moving average of claims, however, fell by 3,250 to 289,750.
Thursday’s news comes after recent labor market data suggested that job growth has accelerated in recent months. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the economy added 257,000 workers to payrolls in January and that job creation has averaged 336,000 for the past three months.
The total number of people receiving unemployment benefits was 2.9 million for the week ending Jan. 24, an increase of 44,284 from the week before.
But the number of beneficiaries has come down significantly over the course of the past year, as job growth has accelerated and the unemployment rate has fallen from 6.6 percent to 5.7 percent. There were 3.5 million people receiving insurance payments altogether in January 2014.
