The US Department of Labor reported on Thursday that the number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits fell again last week.
New jobless claims totaled 779,000 last week, the lowest since the end of November, indicating that the US labor market was stabilizing as pandemic-related restrictions on businesses started to loosen.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits declined 33,000 from 812,000 the previous week to a seasonally adjusted 779,000 for the week ended January 30th.
Last week’s surprise decline was the third straight weekly fall and less than the 830,000 forecast by analysts.
Continuing Jobless Claims Also Decline
Continuing claims also continued to decline, dropping 193,000 from the previous reporting week to 4.6 million.
The total of those receiving benefits fell by half a million to 17.8 million which is still historically very high. The pandemic-era peak for continuing claims was 24.9 million in early May.
According to unadjusted numbers, last week’ decline in jobless claims can largely be attributed to a decline of over 55,000 in Illinois. However, there was a gain of over 46,000 in California.
The economic news tomorrow should be dominated by the Labor Department release of the nonfarm payrolls count for January.
