Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Another 840,000 U.S. workers have filed new unemployment claims, the Labor Department said in its weekly report Thursday.
The department said the new claims were filed for the week ending Oct. 3, and were a decrease of 9,000 from the previous week.
The unemployment rate is 7.5%, the report said, a 0.7-point decrease.
Most analysts had expected about 820,000 new claims.
Weekly claims have not fallen below 800,000 since March and remain well above the record pre-pandemic record high of 695,000, set in 1982.
The department said there are 10.9 million continuing claims, which lag behind new claims by a week. More than 25 million Americans are still claiming some form of unemployment benefits.
Analysts say it's unlikely that Thursday's report reflects mass job losses in the airline industry, which began laying off workers in large numbers on Oct. 1. The airlines were barred, under the terms of federal aid they received in the spring, from laying off employees until the start of October.
