Jobless claims off 15,000 to 233,000 in July 15 week

WASHINGTON – Initial claims for U.S. state unemployment benefits fell by 15,000 to 233,000 in the July 15 employment survey week, following a small upward revision to the claims level in the previous week, data released by the Labor Department Thursday showed.

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The current week's claims level saw a 9,000 drop from the 242,000 level in the July 17 employment survey week, a positive for July payrolls.

Claims data have decreased this week, reverting back to recent lows seen in May. The claims data remains well below their year ago levels, indicating that the pace of layoffs remains low.

The four-week moving average for initial claims, a better measure of the underlying trend of the data, fell by 2,250 to 243,750 in the June 17 week.

However, if the number of headline claims does not change next week and there are no revisions to data from the past four weeks, the four-week average will fall by 2,750 as the 244,000 level in the June 24 week rolls out of the calculation.

Seasonal adjustment factors had expected a decrease of 3.9%, or 11,160 in unadjusted claims in the week. Instead, unadjusted claims fell by 28,122 to 256,594 and were well below the 268,526 level in the comparable week a year ago.

The level of continuing claims rose by 28,000 to 1.977 million in the July 8 week, while the four-week moving average for continuing claims rose by 9,000 to 1.959 million.

The seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate held steady at 1.4% in the July 8 week for the fourteenth straight week. The current week's rate is down from 1.6% in the same week a year earlier.

The unemployment rate among the insured labor force is well below that reported monthly by the Labor Department because claims are approved for the most part only for job losers, not the job leavers and labor force reentrants included in the monthly report.

Market News International is a real-time global news service for fixed-income and foreign exchange market professionals. See www.marketnews.com.
Economic indicators Jobless claims
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