Bloomberg had its consensus weekly estimate at 272,000, and Dow Jones (via the Wall Street Journal) had a 271,000 consensus estimate.
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“Businesses are holding on to workers because the US economy is strong”, Thomas Costerg, a senior economist at Standard Chartered Bank in New York, said before the report.
“Stable initial jobless claims and remarkably low continuing claims suggest labor market health remains intact”, said Barclays economist Jesse Hurwitz. These data are reported with a one-week lag.
Claims for the prior week were unrevised. Jobless claims touched a 40-year low in the week of July 18 and have been only modestly above that level in recent weeks.
The government will issue the latest employment report on Friday morning.
The four-week average has been below or just slightly above 300,000 since last September.
Also encouraging was the fact that the total number of unemployed people receiving benefits in September hit the lowest level since November of 2000.
The four – week moving average of claims, which evens out weekly ups and downs, fell by 1,000 to 270,750 last week. They expect the unemployment rate to be held steady. Many layoffs may also reflect company- or industry-specific causes, such as cost-cutting or business restructuring, rather than underlying labor market trends.
The job growth has steadied the economy as global pressures mount.
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The small number of people losing their jobs each week reflects steady improvement in the USA labor market over the past few years that has driven the unemployment rate down to 5.1%.
