Temporary equipment shutdown pushes up jobless claims by 23 percent in Louisiana last week

Temporary shutdown pushes up jobless claims in La.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Initial jobless claims in Louisiana jumped 23 percent last week, mostly because of a temporary shutdown in the transportation equipment industry.

That’s according to the Louisiana Workforce Commission, which recorded 6,003 first-time claims for unemployment payments for the week ending Dec. 12. That’s up from 4,880 the previous week. For the comparable week ending Dec. 13, 2008, there were 3,831 first-time claims.

The number of continued benefit weeks dropped to 64,405 last week from the previous week’s tally of 65,092. For the comparable week a year ago, there were 31,396 additional weeks of benefits.