US: 1.31 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week

• Weekly Initial Jobless Claims in US decreased by 99,000 last week.
• US Dollar Index continues to move sideways below 96.50.

There were 1,314,000 Initial Claims for unemployment benefits in the US during the week ending July 4th, the data published by the US Department of Labor (DOL) revealed on Thursday.

This reading followed the previous week's print of 1,413,000 (revised from 1,427,000) and came in slightly better than the market expectation of 1,375,000.

Market reaction

The US Dollar ındex largely ignored this data and was last seen losing 0.06% on the day at 96.42.

Additional takeaways

"The 4-week moving average was 1,437,250, a decrease of 63,000 from the previous week's revised average."

"The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 12.4% for the week ending June 27, a decrease of 0.5 percentage point from the previous week's revised rate."

"The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending June 27 was 18,062,000, a decrease of 698,000 from the previous week's revised level."