The Labor Department reported Thursday that first-time requests for unemployment insurance jumped to a seasonally adjusted 524,000 in the week ending Jan. 10, from an upwardly revised figure of 470,000 the previous week. Analysts had expected 500,000 new claims. The increase is partly due to a flood of requests from newly-laid off people who delayed filing claims over the holidays, a Labor Department analyst said.
The layoffs continued Thursday.
1. MeadWestvaco, which makes paper and plastic products: cut 2,000 (10%)
2. Software company Autodesk Inc.: 750 jobs (10%)
3. Google: Close three engineering offices and cut 100 recruiters
4. Seagate: Cut 2,950 jobs (6%)
5. Pfizer
6. Motorola: 4000 more jo
7. Textron Inc.
8. Cummins Inc.
The four-week average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations, fell by 8,000 to 518,500 last week. In one spot of good news, the number of people continuing to request benefits declined to 4.5 million from an upwardly revised 4.6 million the previous week. The continuing claims lag the initial claims data by one week. Still, the number of people remaining on the rolls is near a 26-year high and is up sharply from a year ago, when it stood at 2.7 million.
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