The number of Americans submitting new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly dropped sharply last week in tandem with a labor market recovery driven by brisk economic activity and increased vaccinations.
Initial claims for unemployment benefits were 364,000 for the week ending June 26 based on a report released by the Department of Labor on Thursday.
This reading is down from the previous week with a drop in total claims of 51,000 and last week’s reading also missed the survey of investors targeting total claims of 390,000.
The report was released a day before the NFP data was released for June. The NFP reading is expected to show an increase of 706,000 job additions compared to 559,000 in May and a decline in the unemployment rate to 5.6%.
Post -pandemic employment data has changed a lot of things with 7 million people facing unemployment. Despite a decline in weekly jobless claims, the claims level continued to rise to 3.47 million, up 56,000 from the previous week.
On the other hand, the number of those who received benefits through all programs dropped from 180,890 to 14.66 million. At the time of writing, the dollar index, which measures the strength of the greenback against six other major currencies, traded lower to 92,343.
The market focus is now focused on the NFP data which will be released on Friday.
