A lot more Americans have listed their names on the jobless claims than what was originally expected during last week’s application. In fact, this number is the highest in three years. This indicates that a lot of companies are removing jobs for its employers as the current economic condition of the United States, albeit recovering, is doing it very slowly.

The total number of jobless claims for the week that ended on July 31 is 479,000, which is a 19,000 climb from the previous week. This is the highest number of jobless claims in three months, since the month of April. This figure also exceeded the highest estimates of analysts from Bloomberg.

The weak economy of the United States has forced several companies to not risk adding more employees to their labor force. This can have potential risks to the level of consumer spending among Americans, which in turn will result in no upside momentum for the labor market.

The original forecast was 455,000 for the week ending July 31. This was the average prediction by 43 projections, with the highest being 470,000. Apparently, even this highest projection was exceeded by the actual number. On the other hand, according to analysts, there was no special factor which caused this unusually high value.