New weekly jobless claims unexpectedly increased last week, even as a broadening vaccination program and the return of some high-contact service jobs took place.

The Department of Labor released its weekly report on new jobless claims on Thursday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Here were the main metrics from the report, compared to consensus data compiled by Bloomberg:

• Initial jobless claims, week ended March 27: 719,000 vs. 675,000 expected and a revised 658,000 during the prior week

• Continuing claims, week ended March 20: 3.794 million vs. 3.750 million expected and 3.870 million during the prior week

Last week's jump in new jobless claims came as a surprise to economists looking for an improvement to a new pandemic-era low. However, the prior week's claims were revised down to 658,000 to show an even more marked improvement from the 684,000 previously reported. The new four-week moving average for new claims came down by 10,500 to 719,000 amid these revisions.

"This is a bit disappointing, given the sharp drop in Google searches for 'file for unemployment' last week, but note that last week’s claims were revised down to 658K from 684K," Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in an email Thursday. "Taking the two weeks together it’s clear that the trend in claims is falling. We expect a sustained sharp decline in the second quarter as the economy reopens, making it easier for businesses under financial stress to hold onto employees."

This week's report also comes a year after the peak of pandemic-era initial jobless claims, when these came in at a record 6.867 million during the final full week of March 2020. Since then, new weekly claims have declined significantly— albeit with some choppiness over the last 12 months — and closely followed trends in virus-related restrictions and reopenings across the states.

"The recent improvement is consistent with accelerating labor market momentum as economic reopening continues," Nomura economist Lewis Alexander wrote in a recent note.

Still, it will likely take many more months for claims to return to their 2019 levels, when new claims averaged just over 200,000 per week.

Moreover, a staggering number of Americans remain out of work, based on the number of claimants across all programs. As of mid-March, about 18.2 million individuals were still claiming unemployment benefits of some form, including via the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which offers extended benefits to those who have exhausted their regular state insurance.