First-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly decreased in the week ended September 27th, according to a report released by the Labor Department on Thursday.
The report said initial jobless claims fell to 287,000, a decrease of 8,000 from the previous week's revised level of 295,000.
The pullback came as a surprise to economists, who had expected jobless claims to climb to 297,000 from the 293,000 originally reported for the previous week.
The Labor Department said the less volatile four-week moving average also edged down to 294,750, a decrease of 4,250 from the previous week's revised average of 299,000.
With the decrease, the four-week moving average fell to its lowest level since hitting its post-recession low of 293,750 in the week ended August 2nd.
Continuing claims, a reading on the number of people receiving ongoing unemployment assistance, also fell to 2.398 million in the week ended September 20th from the preceding week's revised level of 2.443 million.
The Labor Department said the drop pulled continuing claims down to their lowest level since hitting 2.395 million in the week ended June 17, 2006.
The four-week moving average of continuing claims also fell to a nearly eight-year low of 2,441,250, a decrease of 20,000 from the previous week's revised average of 2,461,250.
Peter Boockvar, managing director at the Lindsey Group, said, "Bottom line, the pace of firing's continues to settle in at the lowest levels seen in the two previous expansions in the late 1990's and mid 2000's."
"Tomorrow, we'll get a measure of the pace of hiring's which will likely be above 200k with a 6.1% unemployment rate, which will reflect a labor market that is not seeing the supply that the Fed thinks exists while the demand for labor remains good, not great," he added.
Friday morning, the Labor Department is scheduled to release its more closely watched monthly employment report.
Economists expect the report to show an increase of about 215,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate is expected to come in unchanged at 6.1 percent.
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