Slow but still going down.
WASHINGTON – The number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since early July, evidence that job cuts are slowing.
The Labor Department said Thursday that initial claims for unemployment insurance dropped to a seasonally adjusted 545,000 from an upwardly revised 557,000 the previous week. Wall Street economists expected claims to rise by 5,000, according to Thomson Reuters.
The decline was the third in the past four weeks. The four-week average, which smooths out fluctuations, dropped 8,750 to 563,000. Despite the improvement, that's far above the 325,000 per week that is typical in a healthy economy.
"The message here is that the labor market's healing process is agonizingly slow," Joshua Shapiro, chief economist at MFR Inc., wrote in a note to clients.
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