Initial Jobless Claims Fall More Than Expected

Washington, DC, March 19, 2009--Initial jobless claims fell more than expected last week, the Labor Department said.

Initial requests for unemployment insurance dropped to a seasonally adjusted 646,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 658,000. That was better than analysts' expectations.

But continuing claims jumped 185,000 to a seasonally adjusted 5.47 million, another record-high and more than the roughly 5.33 million that economists expected.