Initial jobless claims slipped last week.
Claims, which count the number of people who applied for unemployment insurance for the first time in the past week, fell to 234,00 from an upwardly revised 235,000.
Economists had forecast that they would jump to 245,000.
The four-week moving average was 247,250, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week’s revised number.
Initial jobless claims are used as a real-time proxy for the pace of layoffs and the overall health of the labor market since people usually file for benefits soon after they lose their jobs.