U.S. Initial Jobless Claims at 219,000, Exceeding Wall Street Expectations

Last week's U.S. initial jobless claims surpassed market expectations.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor's report on the 6th (local time), last week's U.S. initial jobless claims were 219,000, exceeding the market expectation of 214,000. This figure is over 10,000 higher than the revised count of 208,000 from the previous week.

The number of continued jobless claims, which represents those filing for unemployment benefits for two consecutive weeks, also slightly exceeded expectations at 1,886,000 compared to the forecast of 1,870,000.

The non-farm productivity for the fourth quarter, announced at the same time, was 1.2%, falling short of the expected 1.5% and the revised figure of 2.3% from the previous quarter.