Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as the news is expected to come that the nation’s unemployment rate is expected to drop slightly.
Applications for unemployment assistance fell to 227,000 for the week of Aug. 31, according to statistics released by the U.S. Department of Labor Thursday. That’s a drop of some 5,000 applications from the previous week.
The Associated Press reported that analysts had been expecting the number to be some 230,000.
The four-week average of claims fell to 230,000, a drop of 1,750.
The total number of Americans collecting jobless benefits declined by 22,000 to 1.84 million for the week of Aug. 24.
