US filings for jobless aid jump to 219,00 last week but remain within stable range of past few years

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. applications for unemployment benefits rose last week before Iran, Israel and the U.S. announced a two-week ceasefire deal that injected a degree of optimism into a still-clouded global economic picture.

The number of Americans applying for jobless aid for the week ending April 4 jumped by 16,000 to 219,000 from the previous week’s 203,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s more than the 210,000 new filings analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet were expecting but within the range of the past several years.

Filings for unemployment benefits are considered representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

The four-week moving average of jobless claims, which evens out some of the weekly swings, rose by 1,500 to 209,500.

The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending March 28 fell by 38,000 to 1.79 million, the fewest in nearly two years.