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Dora Reynolds, who is currently unemployed, sits along a road downtown on October 24, 2016 in East Liverpool, Ohio
Economists forecast that claims, which count the number of people who applied for unemployment insurance for the first time in the past week, ticked down slightly to 240,000.
Last week, claims rose by 20,000 to 243,000. Moreover, the four-week moving average came in at 236,000.
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.