Jobless claims are lowest in four years

LOS ANGELES – New government data Thursday showing new jobless claims falling to a new four-year low suggest the dark days for American workers might be abating.

It may be too early to tell, but employment figures from the past few months are more chipper than they have been in years, with a stable 8.3 percent national unemployment rate.

And first-time applications for unemployment benefits fell 6,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 357,000 – the lowest since April 2008, the Labor Department said Thursday, one day before the release of March’s employment report.

Even the less-volatile four-week average for jobless claims is down to 361,750, another four-year bottom.

Another source, Chicago consultancy Challenger Gray & Christmas, found U.S. employers announced 8.8 percent fewer job cuts last month than they did a year earlier. The 37,880 planned layoffs, the lowest since last May, are yet another indicator of job market improvement.

And at government agencies, worker reductions are down 86 percent year over year, though Challenger suggested the dip may be the result of an “eye of the storm” effect during an election year.

Telecommunications firms were hardest hit, with nearly half of the 4,089 announced cuts coming from T-Mobile’s effort to consolidate call centers. Many of the rest came from call center cuts from Verizon Wireless, Wells Fargo and television retailer QVC.

But across the country, private companies in the U.S. added 209,000 workers in March in the 26th straight month of growth, according to a report released Wednesday by payroll-processing firm ADP.

The economic outlook recently has been generally hopeful. Several months ago, personal incomes made their highest month-to-month jump in nearly a year. Even with rising oil prices, consumer sentiment is at a nearly five-year high.