US initial jobless claims slide to 432,000

New York, December 31: The count of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell by 22,000 to 432,000 people for the week ended December 26, as the nation’s battered labor market is slowly stabilising.

In the previous week, the same statistics stood at 454,000, according to the data of US Labor Department.

“The four-week moving average was 460,250, a decrease of 5,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 465,750,” the Labor Department said in a statement today.

After being rattled by one of the worst ever financial meltdown, the employment market is on the recovery path especially with slowing pace of job losses.

Meanwhile, the number of people receiving jobless benefits dropped to 4,981,000 for the week ended December 19.

The count of such Americans has come down by 57,000 from the earlier week’s level of 5,038,000.

–Agencies