The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits declined last week but continued to drift in the same range they have been since November, according to a government report released Thursday.
There were 453,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended Sept.18, down 16,000 from an upwardly revised 469,000 the previous week, according to the Labor Department's weekly report.
Economists surveyed by Briefing.com were expecting 457,000 new claims.
The modest drop returns jobless claims to the same level they were two weeks ago. Claims have been stuck in the mid- to upper-400,000 range for about 10 months.
It is interesting to see how little change there has been in jobless claims over the past year. It can be deceiving in scenarios where the amount of jobless claims decrease for weeks at a time. Generally, we can not be to optimistic about unemployment because it is still unsteady. This high unemployment rate is very detrimental to our economy due to the fact that this has forced the government to increase the duration of uninsurance employment. Therefore, the government is spending a lot of money on uninsurance employment that could be better used to stimulate other sectors of the economy, such as our budget deficit.
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