Breaking: 4.4 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week

There were 4,427,000 Initial Claims for unemployment benefits in the US during the week ending April 18th, the data published by the US Department of Labor (DOL) revealed on Thursday. This reading followed last week's increase of 5.2 million and came in slightly higher than the market expectation of 4.2 million.

With this print, the total number of Initial Jobless Claims in the last five weeks surpassed 26 million.

Key takeaways

"The 4-week moving average was 5,786,500, an increase of 280,000 from the previous week's revised average."

"The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 11.0% for the week ending April 11, an increase of 2.8 percentage points from the previous week's unrevised rate."

"The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 11 was 15,976,000, an increase of 4,064,000 from the previous week's revised level."

Market reaction

With the initial reaction, the US Dollar Index retreated from session highs and was last seen gaining 0.1% on the day at 100.44. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 futures turned positive on the day to suggest that the market sentiment improved slightly on the data. 

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Jobless Claims Analysis: Improvement? Nonfarm Payrolls-linked data is more than devastating.

The third consecutive week of improvement? That fact provides little solace to the 4.427 million Americans that file for jobless benefits fro the first time in the week ending on April 17. Expectations stood at around 4.2 million. Continuing claims stand at 15.976 million in the week ending April 10, better than estimated.