NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Jobless claims dropped last week, the government said Thursday, to a level lower than Wall Street analysts expected.

The Labor Department report said 386,000 people filed for benefits in the week ended Aug. 16, compared with an upwardly revised reading of 403,000 in the prior week. Economists, on average, expected 395,000 new claims, according to a Reuters poll.

Many economists view 400,000 as the sign of a soft job market. Claims were above 400,000 from mid-February to mid-July, 22 straight weeks. Last week's level of claims was the lowest since 378,000 in the week ended Feb. 8.

Though many economists thought last week's blackout in the Northeast would skew the number of weekly jobless claims down, since many people couldn't get to unemployment offices, the department said the blackout had "minimal" impact on the numbers.

"I'm not sure I believe the Labor Department," Ethan Harris, chief economist at Lehman Brothers, told CNNfn. "On Friday, there must have been a below-normal number of people applying for benefits."

The four-week moving average of new claims, which irons out the volatility of the weekly data, fell to 394,250 from a revised 395,500 the prior week.

Continued claims, the number of people out of work for a week or more, rose to 3.673 million for the week ended Aug. 9, the latest data available, from a revised 3.63 million the prior week.

"These continued claims are a sign the unemployment rate is still on an upward trajectory," Harris said. "There are still a lot of people out of work out there."

U.S. stock market futures continued to trade higher after the report, pointing to a positive opening on Wall Street. Treasury bond prices fell.

Although the National Bureau of Economic Research has said the latest recession ended in November 2001, job cuts have continued, and the unemployment rate has risen to 6.2 percent.

While economic activity has improved lately, raising hopes that the labor market is close to a turn-around, economists believe it could still take at least a few months before many more jobs become available.