|
Jobless claims fall
|
 |
January 24, 2002: 8:36 a.m. ET
New claims for unemployment benefits lower than expected.
|
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - New jobless claims fell in the United States last week, the government said Thursday, lower than expected, though the economy's first recession in a decade continued to have an impact on the labor market.
The Labor Department reported that the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell to 376,000 last week from a revised 391,000 the preceding week. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected 395,000 new claims last week.
The four-week moving average of new weekly claims, which smoothes fluctuations in the weekly data, dipped to 404,250 last week from a revised 413,000 in the prior week.
And continuing claims -- the number of people drawing benefits for more than a week -- fell to 3.46 million in the week ended Jan. 12, the latest week of available data, from a revised 3.51 million the prior week.
"You look at both continued claims and the number of new filers, and there's been a turn in the trend in the pace of layoffs," Salomon Smith Barney economist Brian Jones told CNNfn's Before Hours program.
To keep consumers spending despite an unemployment rate rising close to 6.0 percent, the Federal Reserve cut its target for short-term interest rates 11 times in 2001 to levels not seen since 1961.
Fed chairman Alan Greenspan is scheduled to address the Senate Budget Committee later Tuesday morning.
U.S. stock futures were higher after the report, pointing to a positive opening on Wall Street. Treasury bond prices were mostly lower. 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
