U.S. Weekly Jobless Claims Decrease From Upwardly Revised Level

(RTTNews) - With the more closely watched monthly jobs report looming, the Labor Department released a report on Thursday showing first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits declined from an upwardly revised level in the week ended April 1st.

The Labor Department said initial jobless claims fell to 228,000, a decrease of 18,000 from the previous week's revised level of 246,000.

Economists had expected initial jobless claims to inch up to 200,000 from the 198,000 originally reported for the previous week.

The report said the less volatile four-week moving average also dipped to 237,750, a decrease of 4,250 from the previous week's revised average of 242,000.

The Labor Department noted that beginning with the latest data, the methodology used to seasonally adjust the national initial claims and continued claims reflects a change in the estimation of the models.

Continuing claims, a reading on the number of people receiving ongoing unemployment assistance, inched up by 6,000 to 1.823 million in the week ended March 25th.

With the uptick and a notable upward revision to the previous week's level, continuing claims reached their highest level since hitting 1.833 million in the week ended December 11, 2021.

The four-week moving average of continuing claims also rose by 10,500 to 1.804 million from the previous week's revised average of 1,793,500, reaching the highest level since the week ended November 13, 2021.

"The latest initial jobless claims data don't change our view that the labor market is tight, despite upward revisions to claims this year," said Matthew Martin, U.S. Economist at Oxford Economics. "Overall, demand for workers is strong and announced layoffs aren't yet visible in the macro data."

On Friday, the Labor Department is scheduled to release its more closely watched report on employment in the month of March.

Economists currently expect the report to show employment increased by 240,000 jobs in March after climbing by 311,000 jobs in February. The unemployment rate is expected to hold at 3.6 percent.

"Tomorrow's jobs report will likely show that the labor market softened in March, but not enough to return inflation to its 2% target," said Martin. "We expect 25bps rate hikes at the May and June meetings."