US Weekly Jobless Claims Decrease 16,000 to 453,000, Labor Department Says

The United States initial jobless claims decrease by 16,000 to 453,000 in the week ended Sept. 25, according to the Labor Department’s weekly report.

The revised figure for the previous week ending Sept. 18 was 469,000 from 465,000. Economic experts polled by Dow Jones Newswires had projected that new claims would fall by only 5,000.

An analyst form Econoday projected claims to fall to 459,000 from the prior week with a ranges of estimates between 452,000 to 465,000, while Briefing.com survey expected last week’s figure to hit 450,000.

The Labor Department said the four-week moving average, a clearer measure of unemployment trends, fell by 6,250 to 458,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 464,250.

“We’re still at the very early stages of gradual improvement,” David Semmens, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank in New York told Bloomberg News before the report. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be picking up any momentum.”

The seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate for the week ended Sept. 18 was 3.5%, a 0.1 percentage point decrease from the prior week’s revised rate of 3.6%.

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