Unemployment claims dropped last week

Overall, claims have fallen about 7 percent in the past two months, and, although the labor market still isn’t showing substantially larger gains, companies are picking up hiring. 

Economists have said applications between 300,000 and 400,000 reflect labor market growth as the weekly figure bounces up and down around the 400,000 mark. During the height of the recession, applications hit a high of 659,000.

Economists still expect the economy added about 200,000 jobs in April, right about the same as the 216,000 in March when the unemployment rate fell to 8.8 percent, a two-year low. 

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending April 2 was just shy of 8.3 million, a drop from the previous week. 

The number of people collecting benefits dropped by 7,000 to 3.7 million during the week ending April 9, the lowest number since September 2008. The figure doesn’t include workers receiving federal extended and emergency benefits.

The number of workers who’ve exhausted their 26 weeks of state benefits and have moved on to federal programs decreased by about 70,000 to 4.24 million in the week ended April 2.

Overall, 49 states and territories reported an increase in claims, while four had a decrease.

The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending April 9 were in California (+25,646), North Carolina (+6,041), Kentucky (+5,202), Texas (+5,108), and Florida (+4,299), while the largest decreases were in Minnesota (-403), Iowa (-389), Maine (-55), and Wyoming (-9).

Extended benefits were available in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin, during the week ending April 2.