Jobs Reports Indicate More People Out of Work

Two separate jobs reports Thursday painted an unsavory picture of the U.S. job market in August, sending stocks lower in advance of the official government jobs report for August.

The Labor Department said Thursday that in the last week of August, filings for state unemployment benefits rose 15,000 to 444,000. After three straight weeks of declines in unemployment benefits requests, the jump was the largest weekly surge in more than five years. Economists had been expecting another drop for the week ended August 30.

In a separate report, ADP announced that 33,000 private sector jobs were shed in August. Analysts had been expecting a drop of around 25,000.

Wall Street responded very negatively to the news, sending stocks down more than 200 points in early trading Thursday.

The U.S. jobs picture is expected to become a little clearer Friday morning when the Labor Department issues its monthly non-farm payrolls report and updated unemployment rate. Analysts are anticipating that 70,000 jobs were lost in August and that the unemployment rate will tick up to 5.8 percent from 5.7 percent.