The number of American workers filing for unemployment edged up last week following four consecutive weeks of declines, as the labor market continues along its bumpy road to recovery. First-time filings for unemployment insurance, a proxy for layoffs, came in at 353,000 for the week ending Aug. 21, a rise of 4,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 348,000, the Labor Department said in a statement (pdf). “Alas, a fifth straight weekly decline was not to be with seasonally adjusted new jobless claims,” Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “The pandemic has demonstrated that few things move in a straight line and the latest snapshot of jobless claims is consistent with that.” Weekly claims surged to a record high of 6.2 million in April 2020 when the COVID-19 outbreak triggered lockdowns that shook the economy. For the most part, they have fallen …