The number of people applying for initial jobless claims in the United States rose by 17,000 last week, to 551,000, U.S. data revealed Thursday.

The spike was the first increase in four weeks, the U.S. Department of Labour said. The Wall Street consensus expectation was for initial claims to come in at 531,000.

That would have been a slight increase on the 530,000 initial claims the Labour Department reported for the week ended Sept. 19. But on Thursday, the department upwardly revised its data for the previous week, saying initial claims actually came in at 534,000 during the period.

The number of new applicants for state unemployment benefits may have risen, but the total number of people receiving those benefits fell by 70,000 people to 6.09 million. That was better than the 6.1 million economists had been expecting.

It's not clear to what extent the decrease in jobless claims was due to the unemployed finding new jobs, and how can be attributed to still-jobless Americans simply running out of benefits.

Most states offer 26 weeks of benefits, but earlier this year, Congress approved federally funded extensions of up to 53 weeks in some cases.

As recently as last month, Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott brought forward a bill that would offer an additional 13 weeks of benefits for more than 300,000 jobless people who live in states with unemployment rates of at least 8.5 per cent.

Most of those people were set to run out of benefits by the end of September.