As Hurricane Rita approached the Texas coast on September 22, the U.S. Labor Department reported that initial claims for unemployment insurance continued to rise in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. For the week ending September 17, the seasonally adjusted number of initial jobless claims rose to 432,000, an increase of 8,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 424,000 and more then 100,000 higher than the 327,000 claims for the week ending September 3.
The department's four-week moving average continues to move upward as well. Last week it rose to 376,250 claims, an increase of 29,000 from the previous week's revised average of 347,250.
