Investing.com - The number of people who filed for unemployment assistance in the U.S. last week fell to a nine-week low, 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 March 28 declined by 20,000 to a seasonally adjusted 268,000 from the previous week’s total of 288,000.
Analysts had expected initial jobless claims to fall by 3,000 to 285,000 last week.
Continuing jobless claims in the week ended March 21 fell to 2.325 million from 2.413 million in the preceding week. Analysts had expected continuing claims to decline to 2.405 million.
The four-week moving average was 285,500, a decline of 14,750 from the previous week’s total of 300,250. 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 1.0823 from around 1.0835 ahead of the release of the data, GBP/USD was at 1.4797 from 1.4814 earlier, while USD/JPY was at 119.76 from 119.63 earlier.
The US dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, was at 98.15, compared to 98.04 ahead of the report.
Meanwhile, U.S. stock futures pointed to a lower open. The Dow futures pointed to a drop of 0.15%, the S&P 500 futures shed 0.2%, while the Nasdaq 100 futures slumped 0.2%.
Elsewhere, in the commodities market, gold futures traded at $1,203.70 a troy ounce, compared to $1,204.80 ahead of the data, while crude oil traded at $48.75 a barrel from $48.82 earlier.