Unemployment Is Up Again

Jobless benefit claims are on the rise again across the country, sitting now at 242,000 for the week ending April 29th, and the unemployment rate changed little, which moves in a range between 3.4% and 3.7%. That’s an increase of 13 thousand people filing claims over the previous week, but economists say it’s still on the low end.

Meanwhile, an estimated 5.7 million Americans were collecting unemployment for the week of April 22nd.

Teenagers were the most unemployed class at 9.2%, Blacks and Hispanics came in next at 4.7% and 4.4% respectively, followed by adult women, 3.1% of whom are unemployed.

The number of people who have been out of work fewer than 5 weeks went down by 406 thousand, and the long-term unemployed, those who have been out of work for 27 weeks or more, is still about the same, sitting at 20.6% of the total unemployed.

 -Tony Lee