India, April 24 -- The Labor Department released a report on Thursday showing first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits edged modestly higher in the week ended April 19th.
The report said initial jobless claims crept up to 222,000, an increase of 6,000 from the previous week's revised level of 216,000.
Economists had expected jobless claims to rise to 221,000 from the 215,000 originally reported for the previous week.
"The jobless claims data for now are consistent with a labor market that is stable enough to allow the Federal Reserve to keep policy on hold while it monitors the path of inflation as tariffs kick in," said Nancy Vanden Houten, Lead U.S. Economist at Oxford Economics.
Meanwhile, the Labor Department said the less v...