Investing.com - The number of people who filed for unemployment assistance in the U.S. last week fell to the lowest level since 2000, fuelling optimism over the strength of the labor market, official data showed on Thursday.
In a report, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending January 24 decreased by 43,000 to a seasonally adjusted 265,000 from the previous week’s total of 308,000.
Analysts had expected initial jobless claims to decline by 8,000 to 300,000 last week.
Continuing jobless claims in the week ended January 17 fell to 2.385 million from 2.456 million in the preceding week. Analysts had expected continuing claims to decline to 2.420 million.
The four-week moving average was 306,500, a decrease of 8,250 from the previous week’s total of 306,750. The monthly average is seen as a more accurate gauge of labor trends because it reduces volatility in the week-to-week data.
EUR/USD was trading at 1.1303 from around 1.1314 ahead of the release of the data, while GBP/USD was at 1.5117 from 1.5126 earlier, while USD/JPY was at 118.09 from 117.93 earlier.
The US dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, was at 94.90, compared to 94.82 ahead of the report.
Meanwhile, U.S. stock futures pointed to a mixed open. The Dow futures pointed to a gain of 0.1% at the open, the S&P 500 futures declined 0.1%, while the Nasdaq 100 futures shed 0.2%.
Elsewhere, in the commodities market, gold futures traded at $1,272.50 a troy ounce, compared to $1,273.90 ahead of the data, while crude oil traded at $44.70 a barrel from $44.56 earlier.