First time unemployment claims rise by 15,000, US

First-time unemployment claims rose by 15,000 in the week ending Saturday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Thursday. Initial claims climbed to 309,000 in the week, as the bureau revised the previous week's figure from 292,000 to 294,000. The previous week's data was still open to question. In the prior week, first time claims dropped by a dramatic 31,000, but the department said two states were left out of the report due to a change in software that caused delays. In the current report, the four week rolling average for first-time claims was 314,750. The largest increases in initial claims for the week that ended Sept. 7 were in Tennessee with 681 additional claims, Oklahoma with 601 and Mississippi with 298. The largest decreases were in California with a drop of 25,412, New York, where claims fell by 2,260 and Florida with 1,808 fewer claims.