Following a positive January employment report, the number of initial weekly unemployment claims in the first week of February fell to 358,000, the lowest it has been since April of 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The latest weekly figure, reported for the week ending Feb. 4, fell by 15,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 373,000.
The seasonally unadjusted advance number of initial claims under state programs totaled 397,810 in the week ending Feb. 4, a decrease of 24,477 from the previous week. There were 440,706 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.
A drop in the number of initial unemployment claims usually is a signal of healthy new job creation. The national economy has seen more than 200,000 new jobs created in each of the past two months.
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