Thursday morning brought more good news about the outlook for jobs.
New claims for unemployment benefits fell to 259,000 in the week before Labor Day, the Department of Labor reported Thursday, down from 263,000 the week before.
Private sector economists had expected a slight uptick, but for seasonally-adjusted jobless claims to remain at a very low level.
Instead, in a favorable sign for the economy, they fell lower than they have since July, to levels not seen before this year since the dot-com bubble.
Few jobless claims are a positive sign for the economy. They signal that fewer workers are getting laid off, and that net job growth is positive. Investors and officials at the Federal Reserve watch the jobless claims numbers closely because they are collected from state job agencies weekly, providing a real-time gauge of the health of the labor market.
Thursday’s numbers indicate that the unemployment rate will keep falling and the labor market will continue to draw in people without jobs or people who are underemployed. Economists reckon that jobless claims under around 300,000 entail a stable or falling unemployment rate. The average for claims over the past month has been 261,250. The 300,000 mark hasn’t been reached in 79 weeks, the longest such streak since 1970.
The jobless claims numbers are just one of the latest signs that the labor market is running hot. On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that there was a record high number of advertised job openings in July.
Although August job creation fell shy of expectations at 151,000, average job creation in the past three months, at 232,000 has been way above the roughly 75,000 needed to keep the unemployment rate stable.
