WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 (Xinhua) -- The number of initial jobless claims in the United States fell to 837,000 last week, as the pandemic-ravaged labor market continues to recover, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
In the week ending Sept. 26, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits dropped by 36,000 from the previous week's upwardly revised level of 873,000, marking the sixth time in the past 28 weeks that the number has come in below 1 million.
The four-week moving average, a method to iron out data volatility, decreased by 11,750 to 867,250, according to the report.
The number of people continuing to collect regular state unemployment benefits decreased by 980,000 to about 11.8 million in the week ending Sept. 19, the report showed.
The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs -- state and federal combined -- for the week ending Sept. 12, however, increased by 484,856 to over 26.5 million.
The jobless claims data came one day ahead of the crucial monthly employment report released by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.4 percent in August, according to earlier data.
The median projection for the unemployment rate is 7.6 percent at the end of this year, and 4 percent by the end of 2023, according to the Federal Reserve's latest economic projections. This is still above the historic low of 3.5 percent the country experienced before the COVID-19 pandemic. Enditem
