WASHINGTON - Initial jobless claims dropped by 3,000 to 420,000 for the week ending Dec. 18, matching economists' expectations.
Processing Content
But the four-week moving average for initial claims, a less volatile figure, rose 2,500 to 426,000.
Continuing claims declined 103,000 to 4.064 million for the week ending Dec. 11, much lower than the 4.110 million of continuing claims predicted by a median estimate of economists polled by Thomson Reuters.
Initial claims for the week ending Dec. 11 were upwardly revised to 423,000 from an originally reported 420,000 figure last week. Continuing claims for the week ending Dec. 4 were revised to 4.167 million from an earlier reported 4.135 million.
