Mar. 20--Hammered by sweeping layoffs in the auto and manufacturing industries, Indiana has jumped to No. 1 in the nation for the biggest increase in new jobless claims.

The Labor Department said Thursday that Indiana had 22,494 new jobless claims for the week ending March 7, a jump of more than 5,600 from the previous week. Behind Indiana were Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida and Michigan.

The figures show that Indiana's manufacturers have taken big lumps in recent months, reflecting the broad downturn in the nation's manufacturing base, some business experts say.

"Because our share of manufacturing is so high, it's not surprising we saw such a big jump in jobless claims," said Michael Hicks, director of Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research in Muncie.

Across the U.S., automakers, recreational vehicle manufacturers, boat makers and other traditional manufacturers and parts suppliers have had a big fall-off in business and have laid off thousands of workers.

The big jump in jobless claims doesn't necessarily mean Indiana is suffering a deeper downturn than other states, only that new claims for a single week jumped sharply.

Statistics on new claims are often volatile, swinging up and down from week to week, said Jerry Conover, director of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business.

Still, Indiana's total jobless claims for the week were nearly double those from a year earlier, he said.

Nationally, new claims dropped to a seasonally adjusted 646,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 658,000. That was better than analysts' expectations. But the continuing claims set a record for the eighth straight week, and few economists expect the labor market to improve any time soon.

Continuing claims jumped 185,000 to a seasonally adjusted 5.47 million.

The four-week average of new claims rose to 654,750, the highest since October 1982, when the economy was emerging from a steep recession, though the labor force has grown by about half since then.

Elkhart-Goshen posted the biggest increase in its unemployment rate since last year, with a jump of 13 percentage points to 18.3 percent in January, the Labor Department said.

The region has been bruised by layoffs in the recreational vehicle industry. Hundreds of workers have lost their jobs at RV makers such as Monaco Coach Corp., Keystone RV Co. and Pilgrim International.

JOBLESS CLAIMS

Indiana reported the biggest increase in new jobless claims in the nation for the week ending March 7, with a jump of more than 5,600. The increase has been attributed to layoffs in the auto and manufacturing industries. About 1,400 jobs were lost in February at Indianapolis' Navistar International, an auto-parts supplier:

Week: No. of new claims

--Feb. 7: 19,260

--Feb. 14: 17,704

--Feb. 21: 15,812

--Feb. 28: 16,891

--March 7: 22,494

Source: U.S. Department of Labor

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