The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 1,750 to 266,250 last week, the lowest since April 2000.
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The Labor Department says applications for jobless benefits rose 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 274,000 last week.
Investors had expected claims to remains steady from the week before at about 270,000.
On Thursday, the panel on “Morning Joe” debated Trump’s role in the Republican Party and in the news media. Claims touched the lowest level since 1973 in mid-July before increasing for three straight weeks.
With Thursday’s release, claims for unemployment insurance benefits held near the very low levels they have scraped throughout the summer.
Flickr / Public Information OfficeInitial jobless claims are at a 15-year low.
The Labor Department released a separate report last Friday showing that non-farm payroll employment rose by 215,000 jobs in July following an upwardly revised increase of 231,000 jobs in June.
That figure represents gross hires, while the monthly jobs data the government also reports are a net total that calculates total hires minus layoffs, quits and other departures.
“We haven’t seen claims at a 300,000 level since February and the economy has shown a lot of signs of improvement since then, ignoring what’s going on beyond the borders”, Jennifer Lee, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto, told Bloomberg.
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Altogether, there were 2.26 million people receiving unemployment benefits through July 25, down from 2.54 million a year ago.
