Initial claims for U.S. state unemployment benefits fell by 5,000 to 240,000 in the July 29 week, exactly as expected, following a small upward revision to the claims level in the previous week, data released by the Labor Department Thursday showed.
The four-week moving average for initial claims, a better measure of the underlying trend of the data, fell by 2,500 to 241,750 in the July 29 week.
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 another 2,000 as the 248,000 level in the July 8 week rolls out of the calculation.
Seasonal adjustment factors had expected a decrease of 8.2%, or 18,136 in unadjusted claims in the week. Instead, unadjusted claims fell by 22,549 to 198,028. The current week's level was well below the 219,202 level in the comparable week a year ago.
The level of continuing claims rose by 3,000 to 1.968 million in the July 22 week, while the four-week moving average for continuing claims rose by 750 to 1.965 million.
The seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate held steady at 1.4% in the July 22 week for the 16th 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.
