U.S. unemployment claims unexpectedly rise

U.S. unemployment lines grew longer last week for the first time in more than a month, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department.

New applications for jobless benefits surprisingly climbed to 412,000 - the first weekly increase since April.

The rise comes even though a handful of Republican-led states have terminated some or all of the extra jobless assistance handed out by the Federal government. Twenty-one more Republican states are scheduled to do so by the middle of July. For the rest of the country, that extra help terminates on Labor Day.

An extra $300 a week in emergency jobless benefits have been blamed as one of the reasons why employers are having a hard time filling a record 9.3 million job openings.

That number is an exact match for the 9.3 million Americans that are officially unemployed.

Lack of childcare, early retirements, and health concerns are also believed to be reasons why some Americans aren't rushing back to work.

But Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday predicted the labor market's bumpy recovery will work itself out and will be booming later this year.

"Most of the act of sort of going back to one's old job, that's kind of already happened. So this is a question of people finding a new job, and that's just a process that takes longer. There may be something of a speed limit on it. If you look at the labor market and you look at the demand for workers and the level of job creation and think ahead, I think it's clear and I am confident that we are on a path to a very strong labor market, a labor market that shows low unemployment, high participation, rising wages for people across the spectrum."

Despite the recent uptick in jobless claims, a fair amount of economic healing has already taken place. New applications for jobless benefits have dropped precipitously from the record 6.1 million reached when the health crisis hit last year.