The number of Americans initially applying for unemployment aid went down slightly last week and remained near a pre-recession low, the Labor Department said Thursday.
In the week ending June 14, the advance figure of seasonally adjusted initial claims for jobless benefits fell by 6,000 to 312, 000, largely in line with economists' expectation of 313,000, the data showed.
Meanwhile, the four-week moving average for new claims, a better measure of the underlying trend of labor market conditions, decreased by 3,750 to 311,750, just above a seven-year low of 310, 500 reached three weeks ago, the figures showed.
The advance figure of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending June 7 stood at 2.56 million, the lowest since October 2007.
The Labor Department said earlier this month that the U.S. economy added 217,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate stayed at 6.3 percent, the lowest level in five years, indicating that the job market was improving.