US: Weekly Initial Jobless Claims decline to 684K vs. 730K expected

• Weekly Initial Jobless Claims in the US decreased by 97,000.
• US Dollar Index posts modest daily gains above 92.60 after the data.

There were 684,000 initial claims for unemployment benefits in the US during the week ending March 20, the data published by the US Department of Labor (DOL) revealed on Thursday. This reading followed the previous print of 781,000 (revised from 770,000) and came in much better than the market expectation of 730,000.

Market reaction

The greenback continues to outperform its rivals after this report and the US Dollar Index was last seen gaining 0.17% at 92.68.

Additional takeaways

"The 4-week moving average was 736,000, a decrease of 13,000 from the previous week's revised average."

"The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.7% for the week ending March 13."

"The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending March 13 was 3,870,000, a decrease of 264,000 from the previous week's revised level."