The U.S. Labor Department has turned in yet another stellar weekly jobless claims report. Thursday’s announcement was 271,000 jobless claims, down 5,000 from the 276,000 reported last week. Bloomberg and Dow Jones were both were calling for 270,000 as the consensus estimate.
While this was considered the sample week by the Labor Department, the report said that there were no special factors that had an impact on this week’s initial claims.
The four-week moving average of weekly jobless claims was 270,750, an increase of 3,000 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 267,750.
Another reading was the advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate, which was unchanged at 1.6% from the previous week’s unrevised rate.
A last issue seen in the weekly claims report is what 24/7 Wall St. refers to as the army of the unemployed. This is the continuing jobless claims, and it comes with a one-week lag. Continuing claims for the week ending November 7 were down 2,000 to 2,175,000. The previous week’s level was revised up 3,000 from 2,174,000 to 2,177,000.
This is one of those reports that just keeps showing that companies are reluctant to lay off workers.
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