Weekly unemployment claims fall to four-year low

The job market showed another sign of strengthening as first-time unemployment benefits fell to a four-year low last week. 

Weekly applications dropped by 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 348,000 for the week ended March 17, the lowest level since March 2008, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The four-week average, a less volatile measure than the weekly figure, dropped to 355,000, from last week's 356,250, another four-year low.

In March 2008, the unemployment rate was 5.1 percent and rising. By the end of the year, after the financial crisis, the rate has soared to 7.3 percent. 

Applications have been dropping since September — the economy has added 734,000 jobs in the past three months and the unemployment rate has fallen from 9.1 percent to 8.3, the lowest level since February 2009. 

As the economy has shown signs of improvement — 3 percent growth in the final three months of last year — employers have picked up the pace of hiring. In the meantime, productivity of workers has fallen, signaling that businesses will need to hire to expand. 

On top of that, the housing market is showing gradual signs of improvement — builders are more confident, winter home sales were the best in five years and monthly sales were back up to levels last seen when a federal homebuyers tax credit was in place through April 2010, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday. 

All told, nearly 7.3 million people received benefits in the week ended March 3, a drop of about 140,000. 

Those who are still receiving jobless benefits — this figure doesn't include federal programs — dropped by 9,000 to 3.35 million for the week ended March 10. 

Those workers who have used their 26 weeks of state benefits and are now getting emergency federal benefits dropped by about 16,000 to 3.31 million in the week ended March 3. 

The largest increases in initial claims for the week ending March 10 were in Kentucky (+742), Puerto Rico (+643), Alabama (+475), North Carolina (+471) and Tennessee (+457), while the largest decreases were in New York (-14,222), California (-4,696), Illinois (-1,290), Florida (-1,215) and Pennsylvania (-1,129).