Weekly jobless claims dip to 235,000 |
Fewer Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, but applications remained at recently elevated levels. The Labor Department said that claims in the seven days to July 20th dropped 10,000 to 235,000. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 238,000 claims for the latest week. The four-week average of claims rose 250 to 235,250, while continuing claims, reported with a one-week lag, slipped 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.851m. The four-week moving average for continuing claims rose to 1.853m, the highest level since December 2021. "[T]he claims data over the last several weeks have been subject to a variety of seasonal factors, but looking past the noise, the claims data are consistent with a labor market that is cooling but not collapsing," said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. |
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