REUTERS/ Lucy Nicholson
Economists expect initial claims dropped to 335,000 in the week ended November 2, down from 340,000 the week before.
Continuing claims from the week ended October 26 are expected to drop down to 2.875 million from 2.881 million in the week prior.
"[W]e posit that we are now past a series of special factors (CA and NV computer upgrades, partial federal government shutdown) that dampened and then inflated the data over the last two months," Citi's Peter D'Antonio wrote to clients. "However, the four-week moving average will continue to be influenced by those factors for a few more weeks to come. Separately, beneficiaries rose a second week and the insured rate held at 2.2%. Though remarkably stable since August, we think that both figures have been dampened somewhat by the California claims backlog."