Jobless Claims Dropped By 27,000 Last Week

By Mark Memmott

Published May 3, 2012 at 8:38 AM EDT

There were 365,000 first-time claims for unemployment insurance filed last week, down 27,000 from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration reports.

The decline was more than economists expected, Bloomberg News says. Reuters says the news "could ease fears the labor market recovery was stalling." Claims have basically been trending around a four-year-low level for much of this year.

We'll learn much more about the health of the labor market on Friday, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics is due to report on April payroll employment and the April unemployment rate. In March, BLS has reported, the jobless rate was 8.2 percent.

Mark Memmott

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.

See stories by Mark Memmott

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