The latest weekly jobless claims numbers have been released by the U.S. Department of Labor. For the week ending September 26, seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims were up by 10,000 from the prior week to 277,000. The 267,000 figure from the prior week was not revised.

Bloomberg had its consensus weekly estimate at 272,000, and Dow Jones (via the Wall Street Journal) had a 271,000 consensus estimate.

As we usually see, the Labor Department said that no special factors had an impact on this week’s initial claims.

The four-week moving average was down by 1,000 to 270,750, and the previous week’s reading was an unrevised 271,750.

Progress keeps getting made on the continuing jobless claims, which we refer to as the army of the unemployed. This report comes with a one-week lag but was down by 53,000 to 2,191,000 in the week of September 19. What stands out the most was that the Labor Department said this was the lowest level for insured unemployment since November 11, 2000, when it was 2,161,000.

Thursday’s report marked the last formal jobs report from the government ahead of Friday’s payrolls and unemployment report. Bloomberg is calling for 203,000 in nonfarm payrolls and 195,000 in private sector payrolls. Unemployment is expected to be flat at 5.1%.

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