U.S. Weekly Jobless Claims Pull Back Off Six-Month High

(RTTNews) - After reporting first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits at a six-month high in the previous week, the Labor Department released a report on Thursday showing a bigger than expected pullback in initial jobless claims in the week ended January 23rd.

The report said initial jobless claims fell to 278,000, a decrease of 16,000 from the previous week's revised level of 294,000.

Economists had expected jobless claims to pull back to 285,000 from the 293,000 originally reported for the previous week.

The upwardly revised figure for the previous week reflected the highest level of jobless claims since the week ended July 4th.

The Labor Department said the less volatile four-week moving average also dropped to 283,000, a decrease of 2,250 from the previous week's revised average of 285,250.

With the revision, the four-week moving average in the previous week was at its highest level since a matching reading in the week ended March 28th.

Meanwhile, the report said continuing claims, a reading on the number of people receiving ongoing unemployment assistance, climbed by 49,000 to 2.268 million in the week ended January 16th.

The four-week moving average of continuing claims also rose to 2,246,250, an increase of 15,750 from the previous week's revised average of 2,230,500.

Next Friday, the Labor Department is scheduled to release its more closely watched monthly employment report for January.