The U.S. Labor Department has released its weekly jobless claims, and we have another week of less than 300,000 in new claims. The trend is still lower, with claims rising by 12,000 in the September 20 week. The reason this is lower in trends is because of the sharp drop from the prior week. Claims were 293,000 versus 281,000 the prior week — and that prior figure was revised from 280,000 in the preliminary report.

This week’s Labor Department report denoted that there were no special factors influencing the figures higher or lower. The four-week average is down 1,250 against both the prior week and the month-ago week.

The army of unemployed, the continuing claims reported with a one-week lag, showed a gain of 7,000 to 2.439 million.

Another issue that stood out was that the unemployment rate for insured workers remained at a post-recession low of 1.8%.

An atrocious durable goods report may have caught the headlines much more than this week’s jobless claims report. Still, that record drop was on the heels of record gains and was tied almost entirely to aircraft and defense orders.

READ ALSO: Durable Goods Show Record Decline, Following Record Gain

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