The U.S. Labor Department has released a solid weekly jobless claims report for the week ending July 18. Its advance report for seasonally adjusted initial claims was down a massive 26,000 to 255,000 — and the prior week’s reading of 281,000 was left unrevised.

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said that there were no special factors affecting this week’s initial adjusted claims, the unadjusted claims did note seasonal factors. Either way, this was a strong weekly report with this notation as proof: this was the lowest level for initial claims since November 24, 1973, when it was 233,000.

The four-week moving average was 278,500, a decrease of 4,000 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 282,500.

The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment (the continuing jobless claims, or the army of the unemployed) during the week ending July 11 (a one-week lag) was down by 9,000 to 2,207,000. The prior week’s report was revised up by 1,000 to 2,216,000.

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Additional BLS data was reported as follows:

• The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 262,981 in the week. The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,244,838, an increase of 10,907 (or 0.5 percent) from the preceding week. The seasonal factors had expected an increase of 19,946 (or 0.9 percent) from the previous week.
• The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending July 4 was 2,278,225, an increase of 96,355 from the previous week. There were 2,611,871 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2014.

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