Wall Street Journal (05/03/12) Jeffrey Sparshott; Eroc Morath
The number of Americans who filed requests for jobless benefits fell last week for the first time in a month, down 27,000 to 365,000. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expected 378,000 new claims. The drop was the biggest since May 2011 and follows three weeks of disappointingly high readings. The U.S. Department of Labor also reported the four-week moving average of claims, which smoothes out week-to-week volatility, increased by 750 to 383,500.