Initial jobless claims fall to lowest level since 2008

From CNN:


Fewer Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits last week. So few in fact, that initial jobless claims were at their lowest level since May 2008.

About 366,000 people filed initial jobless claims in the week ended Dec. 10, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was a decrease of 19,000 from the prior week, and far better than the bigger influx of claims that economists were expecting....

That said, the United States job market is still far from robust. About 8.8. million jobs were lost in the financial crisis, and as of November, still less than a third of those have been added back. Plus, the population has also grown during that time.

Still, 3.6 million people filled for their second week of unemployment benefits or more, in the week ended Dec. 3, the most recent data available.

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Link: http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/15/news/economy/unemployment_benefits/index.htm