Washington, May 6 (IANS): Initial jobless claims in the US last week ticked up to 200,000 amid continued labour market tightness, the Labour Department reported.

In the week ending April 30, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits increased by 19,000 from the previous week's upwardly revised level of 181,000, according to a report released on Thursday by the Department's Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS).

The report also revealed that the number of people continuing to collect regular state unemployment benefits decreased by 19,000 to 1.384 million during the week ending April 23, reports Xinhua news agency.

That number peaked in April and May in 2020, when it was over 20 million.

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programmes, state and federal combined, for the week ending April 16 decreased by 35,165 to 1.478 million.

Data also showed that companies were struggling to hire as labour market supply could not meet demand.

The number of job openings was little changed at 11.5 million by end of March, the highest level in the history of the series which began in December 2000, the BLS reported on Tuesday.

The number of unemployed persons, however, decreased by 318,000 to a level of 6 million, according to the March unemployment report.

Payroll data company Automatic Data Processing (ADP) reported on Wednesday that private companies in the US added 247,000 jobs in April, with small companies cutting 120,000 employees.

The April unemployment report, which will include employment data from both the private sector and the government, is set to be released on Friday.