More people in the United States apply for unemployment insurance

More Americans applied for unemployment insurance last week, though the labor market remains one of the strongest parts of the U.S. economy. Jobless claims for the week ending July 30 rose by 6,000 to 260,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. First-time applications usually reflect layoffs. The four-week average, which balances the weekly ups and downs, also increased from the previous week, to 254,750 applications. The total number of Americans who collected unemployment insurance during the week ending July 23 rose by 48,000 from the previous week to 1,416,000. That figure has been near 50-year lows for months. On Tuesday, the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers posted fewer job openings in June as the economy faces persistently high inflation and rising interest rates. Job openings fell to 10.7 million in June, which are still high, from 11.3 million in mayo.as vacancies, which never exceeded 8 million monthly before last year, topped 11 million each month from December to May before dropping in June. The official employment report for July, to be released on Friday, is expected to show that employers added another 250,000 jobs last month, which would be a healthy number in normal times but would be the lowest since December 2020, when the global economy was being devastated by the pandemic. Read: Economists expect the unemployment rate to remain at 3.6% for the fifth consecutive month.
Other indicators point to some weakness in the U.S. economy. The government said last week that the economy contracted 0.9% in the second quarter, the second consecutive quarterly contraction. Judge calls Nasson Joaquin a predator when issuing his sentence

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