US applications for jobless benefits fell last week and remain in historically healthy range

The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits fell modestly last week, remaining in the historically low range since the U.S. economy emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending Aug. 9 fell by 3,000 to 224,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That's below the 230,000 new applications that economists had forecast.

Weekly applications for jobless benefits are seen as a proxy for U.S. layoffs and have mostly settled in a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 throttled the economy in the spring of 2020.

Thursday's report showed that the four-week average of claims, which smooths out some of the week-to-week volatility, ticked up by 750 to 221,750.

The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the previous week of Aug. 2 fell by 15,000 to 1.96 million.