New claims for unemployment insurance benefits rose to 265,000 last week, up from a revised ultra-low level of 259,000 the week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
Private-sector economists had expected a slight uptick, to 268,000, according to a poll conducted by Bloomberg.
With Thursday’s report, jobless claims have not eclipsed the 300,000 mark for 55 straight weeks. That is the longest such streak since 1973, according to the Labor Department.
The monthly average of jobless claims, a more stable indicator, budged up by a mere 250 to 259,750. A similarly low level was hit in October, but before then such a small average of claims had not been seen since 1973. Back then, there were just 90 million Americans in the workforce, versus 159 million today.
Scarce claims are thought to signify that the economy is strong, because they indicate that layoffs are rare and that job growth is strong. And because the claims numbers are reported from state unemployment offices weekly, they provide a real-time gauge of the health of the labor market.
Earlier in 2016, the claims numbers inched upward noticeably, with the average touching as high as 285,000 in January. That rise led some economists to believe that job gains, too, would likely deteriorate in the months ahead.
Yet now jobless claims are again plumbing decades-low levels, hinting that the labor market has weathered the headwinds to the U.S. economy from slowing growth overseas and the decimation of domestic oil production.
“The U.S. job market remains solid,” PNC economist Gus Faucher wrote in a note on Thursday’s report, forecasting 185,000 new payroll jobs for March.
In the past three months, meanwhile, the economy has added an average of 228,000 new payroll jobs. Fewer than 100,000 new jobs each month are needed to keep the unemployment rate trending down from its current 4.9 percent, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen has said.
The claims numbers are adjusted for seasonal variations.
