New U.S. unemployment filings decline to 400,000, Labor Dept. says

July 29 (UPI) -- About 400,000 workers in the United States have filed new unemployment claims, the Labor Department said Thursday in its weekly report.

The number of new filings is a decrease of about 24,000 from the previous week, the report said.

Thursday's assessment also revised up the previous week's filings by 5,000 claims.

The department's figure was higher than most economists expected, about 380,000 new claims.

For the week ending July 24, there were about 3.3 million continuing claims, which lag initial claims by a week.

The largest increases for the latest available data were seen in Michigan, Texas, Kentucky, Missouri and Illinois. The greatest decreases in claims were seen in New York, Puerto Rico, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia.

The report came on the same day the Commerce Department reported that the U.S. economy grew by almost 7% for the second quarter of 2020, which was the third straight quarter of increased growth.