Jobless Claims Drop Less Than Forecast

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The number of people filing for first-time unemployment help ticked down last week, holding steady after bouncing off a multi-month low the week before.

Meanwhile, the size of the government's unemployment role continued to shrink, raising hope that the labor market is starting to stabilize.

The U.S. Labor Department revealed that initial jobless claims slipped to 530,000 for the week ended October 24. This was down 1,000 from the previous week's revised total of 531,000.

Economists had expected claims to slip to 525,000.

Claims got as low as 520,000 a couple weeks ago, the lowest level since the first week of the year, before ticking up again. Still, the figure remains well below the recent peak of 674,000 seen in late March.

The 4-week moving average for initial claims, which flattens out week-to-week fluctuations in the data, declined to 526,250 from the prior week's number of 532,250. This represented the lowest reading this year.

Continuing claims, which measures the number of people receiving ongoing unemployment help, dropped 148,000 to 5.797 million. This was the sharpest weekly slide since early July.

This is the second week below the 6 million mark - a level continuing claims have hovered above since April.

In other economic data released on Thursday, the government said that Gross Domestic Product, a broad measure of economic strength, rose at a 3.5 percent pace in the third quarter. This was stronger than economists had expected.

(Market News Provided by RTTNews)