Mark Blinch/Reuters
The Bloomberg consensus forecasts that claims, which count the number of people who applied for unemployment insurance for the first time since the past week, ticked up slightly to 249,000.
The prior week saw claims fall to 246,000, marking the 100th straight week that the number came in below 300,000.
Initial jobless claims are used as a real-time proxy for the pace of layoffs and the overall health of the labor market, since people usually file for benefits soon after they lose their jobs.