The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits jumped to the highest level in two months.

Applications increased by 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 382,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's up from 367,000 the previous week. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, increased for the fourth straight week to 375,000.

The economy isn't growing fast enough to support much more hiring. It grew at a tepid 1.7 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter, down from 2 percent in the January-March quarter and 4.1 percent in the final three months of last year.

Growth isn't likely to get much better for the rest of this year. Economists expect it to grow at a roughly 2 percent pace. That's typically too weak to create enough jobs to lower the unemployment rate.

President Obama employs some of the best political stone soup makers in memory, but even they're having trouble with this one. On Wednesday's terrible Census Bureau findings on income and poverty, the White House put out a statement saying the report shows "we have made progress digging our way out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression," even if "too many families are still struggling."

Oh? Such progress includes median household income falling by $777 to $50,054 in 2011, a decline of 1.5% in real terms and the second in two years. This measure of middle-class incomes is 8.1% lower than in 2007. . . . Meanwhile, 46.2 million Americans live in poverty, a near-record high at 15% and also unchanged since last year. They'll be happy to know the White House considers this progress.

In the course of Obama's presidency, people saying they are in the "lower classes" have risen from one-quarter to one-third of the adult population.

According to the Pew Research Center, Americans who say they are in the lower-middle or lower-class has risen from 25 percent to 32 percent in the past four years, in the national survey of 2,508 adults.

Not only has the lower class grown, but its demographic profile also has shifted. People younger than 30 are disproportionately swelling the ranks of the self-defined lower classes. The shares of Hispanics and whites who place themselves in the lower class also are growing.