US: Weekly Initial Jobless Claims rise to 351K vs. 320K expected

• Weekly Initial Jobless Claims in US rose by 16,000.
• US Dollar Index continues to push lower toward 93.00.

There were 351,000 initial claims for unemployment benefits in the US during the week ending September 18, the data published by the US Department of Labor (DOL) revealed on Thursday. This reading followed the previous print of 335,000 (revised from 332,000) and came in worse than the market expectation of 320,000.

Market reaction

With the initial market reaction, the US Dollar Index edged slightly lower and was last seen losing 0.3% on the day at 93.16.

Additional takeaways

"The 4-week moving average was 335,750, a decrease of 750 from the previous week's revised average."

"The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.1% for the week ending September 11, an increase of 0.1 percentage point from the previous week's revised rate."

"The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending September 11 was 2,845,000, an increase of 131,000 from the previous week's revised level. "