Mirroring the somewhat higher initial jobless claims in July, planned layoffs at U.S. companies increased by 6 percent during the same period. Planned layoffs reached their lowest point in seven years during April of 2010, but have slowly moved up since then. 41,676 planned layoffs were announced in July, compared to 38,326 in April.

The figures are still quite low however: “The increases are so slight and the monthly totals so low when compared to recent years,” said John Challenger, CEO of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, “that the trend in no way suggests a reversal of the significant slowdown in job-cut activity witnessed over the past year.”