WASHINGTON — Fewer Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, easing concern the job market was taking a turn for the worse.
Jobless claims fell by 27,000, to 365,000, in the week ended April 28, a one-month low, from a revised 392,000 the prior period, Labor Department figures showed Thursday. The median forecast of 46 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for 379,000 applications.
The plunge in dismissals makes it more likely that the surge over the past three weeks was caused by the timing of the Easter holiday rather than a deterioration in employment. Federal Reserve policy makers last week said that while labor-market conditions have improved, the unemployment rate “remains elevated,” helping explain why they stuck to a plan to hold borrowing costs close to zero through 2014.
“Businesses aren’t looking to cut payrolls aggressively,” Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pa., said before the report. “Demand has increased over the past year, and businesses realize that. They’re going to need to maintain their workforces, or at least add a few more workers.”
A report today may show the U.S. added 160,000 jobs in April, compared with a gain of 120,000 the previous month, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The jobless rate held at a three-year low of 8.2 percent, the survey showed.
The productivity of U.S. workers fell in the first quarter, indicating businesses are reaching the limit of how much efficiency they can wring from the workforce, another report from the Labor Department also showed Thursday. The measure of employee output per hour declined at a 0.5 percent annual rate, after a 1.2 percent gain in the prior three months.
