In the week ending Oct. 4, 478,000 Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
That’s a decrease of 20,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 498,000. The department estimates that the effects of Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana and Hurricane Ike in Texas added approximately 17,000 claims to the total. The 4-week moving average was 482,500, an increase of 8,250 from the previous week.
