BATON ROUGE (AP) — Initial claims for unemployment insurance in Louisiana jumped nearly 29.5 percent for the week ending April 4, the Louisiana Workforce Commission reported Monday.
Initial claims for the latest week totaled 5,910, compared with 4,563 for the previous week.
State officials blamed most of the increase on sharply higher numbers of unemployed workers coming from the wood products industry and the transportation equipment industry, which includes the hard-hit automobile manufacturing sector, headed by the General Motors Corp. plant in Shreveport.
For the comparable week a year ago, there were 2,365 initial filings for jobless benefits.
Continued unemployment insurance weeks increased to 44,478 for the latest week, up from 43,295 and 20,568 for the comparable week ending April 5, 2008.
The transportation equipment sector led the new claims with 940, followed by construction at 823, wood products at 453, retail trade with 375, administrative services with 322, health care-social assistance with 286 and hotel-food services with 239.
The previous week, transportation equipment accounted for only 58 new claims, while wood products produced 110 new claims.
