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News > Economy
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Jobless claims ease
New weekly claims for unemployment benefits edge down as labor market struggles to recover.
August 22, 2002: 8:56 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - New weekly claims for jobless benefits in the United States eased last week, the government said Thursday, as the labor market's recovery from the loss of more than 1.5 million jobs last year continued to progress slowly.

The Labor Department said the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits slipped to 389,000 in the week ended Aug. 17 from a revised 391,000 the prior week. Economists, on average, expected 385,000 new claims, according to Briefing.com.

The four-week moving average of new jobless claims, which smoothes out fluctuations in the weekly data, rose to 388,250 last week from a revised 382,500 the prior week.

But continued claims, the number of people drawing benefits for more than a week, fell to 3.52 million in the week ended Aug. 10, the latest data available, from a revised 3.53 million the prior week.

Earlier this month, the Labor Department reported that the nation's unemployment rate held steady at 5.9 percent in July, while employers added just 6,000 new jobs.

U.S. businesses cut more than 1.5 million jobs during a recession that began in March 2001 and lately have been able to get more production out of fewer workers, making them reluctant to increase hiring until they see a need to greatly expand production.

Last week, the Federal Reserve decided to leave its target for short-term interest rates alone, keeping borrowing costs low and encouraging consumers to spend despite the labor market problems; but it also warned that weak stock prices and concerns about corporate accounting could put the economy at risk of slumping further.

In speeches Wednesday, however, a number of Fed officials expressed optimism about the economy, indicating it was unlikely the Fed would cut rates again any time soon.

Those comments drove Treasury bond prices down Wednesday, and they continued to fall Thursday morning. U.S. stock market futures were unaffected by Thursday's data and were little changed, pointing to a mixed opening on Wall Street.  Top of page




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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.