Initial Jobless Claims Drop To 358,000 But Are Skewed By Shutdown
By Jim Puzzanghera
October 17, 2013, 6:42 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Initial jobless claims dropped last week to 358,000 but remained high because of the partial federal government shutdown.
The number of people filing for first-time unemployment benefits dropped from the previous week's revised figure of 373,000, which had surged because of the furlough of about 800,000 federal workers on Oct. 1, the Labor Department said Thursday.
Analysts had expected the jobless claims to drop last week to about 330,000.
In the week ending Oct. 5, the number of federal employees filing initial jobless claims jumped to 70,068 from 1,391 the previous week, the Labor Department said. Those are the most up-to-date statistics.
But the data have been highly volatile for several weeks, first because of computer problems in California and Nevada and then because of the shutdown.
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