Jobless claims come in below 800,000 for the 1st time since March

The number of Americans filing new jobless claims has declined to less than 800,000 for the first time in seven months.

The Labor Department on Thursday said that 787,000 Americans filed new jobless claims last week, a decline of 55,000 from the previous week's revised level. This was significantly below the 875,000 claims economists had been expecting, CNBC reports. It's also the first time since the middle of March that the number of claims has been below 800,000, CNN notes.

Additionally, the number of continuing claims declined by about 1 million to 8.37 million claims, according to CNBC. Thursday's report came after last week, the number of new jobless claims unexpectedly rose to the highest level in almost two months.

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At the same time, CNN notes that "23.2 million Americans received some form of government jobless benefits in the week ended October 3." The number of new jobless claims has also still yet to fall below 695,000, which was the record for most claims filed in one week prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Some recovery is better than no recovery, but we want this to be stronger," Evercore ISI managing director and policy economist Ernie Tedeschi told The New York Times. "It's at risk of getting knocked off its slow momentum if we get another shock, another wave of the virus."