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Jobless claims drop
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February 7, 2002: 8:34 a.m. ET
New weekly claims for unemployment benefits fall below analysts' expectations.
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - New claims for jobless benefits fell in the United States last week, the government said Thursday, beating expectations, as a labor market battered by a recession in the world's largest economy continued to stabilize.
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 388,000 new claims last week.
"The economy's still losing jobs and will for another couple of months," Michael Andrews, chief economist at WestLB Global Financial Markets, told CNNfn's Before Hours program. "We're in the process of seeing the labor market stabilizing. It hasn't stabilized yet."
The four-week moving average of new weekly claims, which smoothes out fluctuations in the weekly data, dipped to 380,500 last week from a revised 486,250 in the prior week.
And continued claims -- the number of people drawing benefits for more than a week -- fell to 3.43 million in the week ended Jan. 26, the latest week of available data, from a revised 3.48 million the prior week.
U.S. stock prices were mixed in early trading, while Treasury bond prices fell.
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.
But it decided at its policy meeting in January to leave rates alone, indicating it saw signs that the economy was beginning to improve.
Even as the economy improves, however, job cuts could continue, especially since business leaders are generally more pessimistic about the economy's chances than economists. The unemployment rate, which recently dropped to 5.6 percent, is a lagging indicator and could rise again in the coming months. 
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