Washington, DC, September 22, 2005 -- On a surge of storm-related job losses, first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose by 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 432,000 in the week ending Sept. 17, the Labor Department said Thursday.
Initial claims were the highest since July 2003.
About 103,000 of the new unadjusted claims were related to Hurricane Katrina, a department spokesman said. So far, about 214,000 claims related to Katrina have been filed in the three weeks since the storm struck.
The storm, likely the costliest in U.S. history, devastated the Gulf Coast region on Aug. 29, flooding much of New Orleans, which had more than 600,000 jobs before the storm.
Initial claims in the previous week were revised up by 26,000 to 424,000. The 97,000 increase in filings in the week ending Sept. 10 was the most since the summer of 1992.
Economists were expecting about 454,000 new claims last week.
Excluding the direct filings related to the storm, jobless claims are holding steady or perhaps slightly lower than pre-Katrina levels, indicating that the storm has had no major ripple effect on labor markets elsewhere in the nation. Indeed, jobless claims elsewhere in the nation may be lower because of the higher demand for workers to help shelter refugees and clean up after the storm.
