WASHINGTON (AP) — New claims for unemployment benefits jumped last week to a 16-year high, the Labor Department said Thursday, providing more evidence of a rapidly weakening job market.

The government said new applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 542,000 from a downwardly revised figure of 515,000 in the previous week. That was much higher than economists’ expectations of 505,000, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

The department said that was also the highest level of claims since July 1992, when the economy was coming out of a recession.

The four-week average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations, was even worse: it rose to 506,500, the highest in more than 25 years.

In addition, the number of people continuing to claim unemployment insurance rose sharply for the third straight week to more than four million, the highest since December 1982, when the economy was in a recession.

Those figures partly reflect growth in the labor force, which has increased by about half since the early 1980s.

The unemployment rate in October was 6.5 percent, and last year it averaged 4.6 percent.

The Federal Reserve released projections on Wednesday that the jobless rate will climb to 7.1 to 7.6 percent next year, according to documents from the Fed’s Oct. 29 closed-door deliberations on interest rate policy.

In another economic report, a private research group said the economy’s health declined further in October as stocks, building permits and consumer expectations all fell.

The Conference Board says its monthly forecast of future economic activity declined 0.8 percent in October, worse than the 0.6 percent decrease expected by economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

The index, which weighs indicators like manufacturers’ new orders and supplier deliveries, has fallen four of the last six months. It rose slightly in September, thanks to federal interventions that increased the money supply.

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