U.S. initial jobless claims jump to 10-month high

The number of Americans initially applying for unemployment aid in the final week of February jumped to the highest level since May, U.S. Labor Department said Thursday.

In the week ending Feb. 28, the advance figure of seasonally adjusted initial claims for jobless benefits rose by 7,000 to a 10- month high of 320,000, higher than economists' expectation of 295, 000, the department said.

Meanwhile, the four-week moving average for new claims, a better measure of the underlying trend of labor market conditions, increased 10,250 to a six-week high of 304,750.

The advance figure of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending on Feb. 21 stood at 2.42 million, an increase of 17,000 from the previous week's revised level.

Analysts said severe cold weather last month in most parts of the country might have triggered more temporary layoffs in industries such as construction.

The Labor Department will release its jobs report for February on Friday. In January, the U.S. economy added 257,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate ticked up to 5.7 percent from 5.6 percent in December as more people returned to the labor force amid strong job gains.

U.S. private companies added 212,000 jobs in February, down from 250,000 jobs in January, according to a private survey jointly released by Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and Moody's Analytics.

"While February's job gains came in slightly lower than recent months, the trend of solid growth above 200,000 jobs per month continued," said Carlos Rodriguez, president and executive officer of ADP. Endite