Investing.com - The number of people who filed for unemployment assistance in the U.S. last week fell to the lowest level since mid-July, fuelling optimism over the strength of the labor market, official data showed on Thursday.
In a report, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending September 13 decreased by 36,000 to a seasonally adjusted 280,000 from the previous week’s revised total of 316,000.
Analysts had expected jobless claims to fall by 11,000 to 305,000 last week.
Continuing jobless claims in the week ended September 6 fell to 2.429 million from 2.492 million in the preceding week. Analysts had expected continuing claims to increase to 2.470 million.
The four-week moving average was 299,500, a decline of 4,750 from the previous week’s total of 299,500. The monthly average is seen as a more accurate gauge of labor trends because it reduces volatility in the week-to-week data.
EUR/USD was trading at 1.2859 from around 1.2870 ahead of the release of the data, while GBP/USD was at 1.6362 from 1.6365 earlier.
Meanwhile, U.S. stock index futures remained higher. The Dow 30 indicated a gain of 0.2% at the open, the S&P 500 pointed to a rise of 0.3%, while the NASDAQ 100 indicated an increase of 0.25%.