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U.S. jobless claims fall
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December 13, 2001: 11:18 a.m. ET
New claims tumble to 394,000, biggest drop in more than nine years.
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Fewer Americans lined up at the unemployment office last week as new U.S. jobless claims posted their biggest decline in more than nine years, coming in much lower than economists had expected.
New claims for state unemployment benefits fell to 394,000 in the week ended Dec. 8 from a revised 480,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said.
This is the first week new claims have dropped below 400,000 since the week of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the Labor Department. During the week ended Sept. 15, claims totaled 393,000.
The drop in weekly claims is the largest one-week decline since Aug. 1, 1992, when claims fell by 103,000. The latest figure also came in well below economists' forecasts for 465,000 new claims, according to Briefing.com.
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"The unemployment claims dropping 86,000 -- that's a real shock. It makes people suddenly think the job market isn't as bad as we thought and may be improving," Kevin Logan, chief market economist with Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in New York, told Reuters news service.
But the news wasn't all good. For instance, the report showed the number of workers who kept getting jobless benefits edged up to 3.65 million for the week ended Dec. 1, the latest data available, from a revised 3.62 million the previous week.
As the economy has slowed and tumbled into recession, companies have cut hundreds of thousands of jobs, boosting the unemployment rate to 5.7 percent in November, the highest in six years.
For an in-depth look at corporate job cutting, click here
In its report, the department said that the four-week average of new claims, which smoothes out fluctuations in the weekly data, fell to 465,000 for the latest period from a revised 462,000 the previous week. 
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