US: 1.18 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week

• Weekly Initial Jobless Claims in US decreased by 249,000.
• US Dollar Index clings to small daily gains below 93.00 after the data.

There were 1,186,000 Initial Claims for unemployment benefits in the US during the week ending August 1st, the data published by the US Department of Labor (DOL) revealed on Thursday.

This reading followed the previous week’s print of 1,435,000 (revised from 1,434,000) and came in better than the market expectation of 1,415,000.

Market reaction

This data had little to no impact on the greenback’s performance against its rivals. As of writing, the US Dollar Index was up 0.05% on a daily basis at 92.85.

Additional takeaways

“The 4-week moving average was 1,337,750, a decrease of 31,000 from the previous week’s revised average.”

“The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 11.0% for the week ending July 25, a decrease of 0.6 percentage point from the previous week’s unrevised rate.”

“The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending July 25 was 16,107,000, a decrease of 844,000 from the previous week’s revised level.”