Jobless Claims Fall for Week

Initial jobless claims fell by 20,000 last week, as losses related to the Gulf Coast hurricanes subsided, the Labor Department said Thursday.

Claims fell to 478,000 for the week ended Saturday, just over economists’ forecasts of a decline to 475,000, Bloomberg reported.

The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure, rose to 482,500, the highest since October 2001.

The number of continuing claims rose to 3.659 million for the previous week ended Sept. 27, the highest in more than five years, from 3.603 million the prior week.