The number of Americans filing new applications for jobless benefits unexpectedly rose last week and more people continued to collect unemployment checks at the end of November relative to the beginning of the year as demand for labor cools.

There were 242,000 initial jobless claims in the week ending December 7, the weekly data published by the US Department of Labor (DOL) showed on Thursday. This print followed the previous week's print of 225,000 (revised from 224,000) and came in worse than the market expectation of 220,000.

Applications for US unemployment benefits rose to a two-month high last week, at a time around the end-of-year holidays when data is volatile.