New applications for unemployment benefits fell to 271,000 in the second week of November, the Department of Labor reported Thursday morning, reversing two weeks of noticeably higher weekly claims.
Economists polled by Bloomberg had expected first-time jobless claims to drift down to 270,000.
The rise in claims for unemployment benefits over the previous two weeks was still enough to raise the monthly average by 3,000 to 270,750. Nevertheless, jobless claims remaine extremely low: That average is the lowest since the turn of the century, when the labor force was much smaller.
Overall, the jobless claims show few signs that the jobs recovery is weakening.
Government officials and investors view the weekly jobless claims numbers as a high-frequency indication of the health of the jobs market, as they can be viewed as a proxy for layoffs.
As claims have fallen to the lowest levels in decades in recent months, however, the weekly jobless claims numbers may have lost some of their predictive value. Some economists think that fewer people may be bothering to stop by state unemployment agencies to apply for benefits because jobs are more plentiful. Last week, the Labor Department reported that there are now just 1.4 unemployed workers for every advertised job opening, the lowest such ratio since 2001.
Nevertheless, economists will pay particularly close attention to Thursday’s jobless claims because they cover the week in which the surveys for November’s job report will be conducted.
There were some hints in this fall’s monthly jobs reports that the recovery could be slowing. A few weak months of payroll growth slowed the average monthly growth to around 200,000, well below the 260,000 pace that prevailed in 2014.
But October’s report, which showed 271,000 new payroll jobs, allayed some of those fears.
Chairwoman Janet Yellen and other Fed officials are not likely to worry about the health of the economy based on the jobs outlook. Minutes from their October meeting released Wednesday showed that they expect monthly job growth to slow somewhat as the pool of unemployed workers who need jobs shrinks.
The October jobs report also showed the unemployment rate at 5 percent, down from 5.7 percent a year ago. That improvement corresponds to a drop in the total number of people receiving unemployment benefits from 2.17 million to 1.95 million.
The Labor Department said that there were no special factors influencing Thursday’s report. The biggest increases in jobless claims came from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, and New York.
