US weekly jobless claims fell modestly last week for the third straight week, showing no immediate impact from Hurricane Sandy, the Labor Department said Thursday.
New claims for unemployment insurance, a signal of the pace of layoffs, fell to 355,000 in the week to November 2 from 363,000 the prior week, despite the massive storm which shut down much of New Jersey and the New York City area for the period.
A Labor Department analyst said the effect of the storm, which left more than 100 people dead in the US and Canada, would not show up in the data for several weeks.
The four-week moving average of claims moved higher to 370,500, still largely in the range where the data has been since the beginning of 2012.
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