Fewer Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, indicating U.S. employers were maintaining staff counts in the days leading up to the government shutdown. Jobless claims rose by 1,000 to 308,000 in the week ended Sept. 28, from a revised 307,000, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 50 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for a rise to 315,000. Continuing claims jumped as California worked through its backlog of applications following a change in computer systems. The figures show business leaders remained confident enough in the economy to hold the line on firings even as gridlock in Washington pointed to an imminent partial closing of federal government agencies. Fewer dismissals lay the ground for bigger gains in payrolls and wages that will help sustain consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. “The layoffs side of the labor market is particularly encouraging,� Millan Mulraine, a director of U.S. rates research at TD Securities USA LLC in New York, said before the report. “Businesses are content with the level of payrolls they have. We’re not seeing a lot of job-shedding.� While the claims data were released today, the first partial shutdown of the government in 17 years will probably delay tomorrow’s release of the Labor Department’s September payrolls report, which was projected to show employers added 182,000 workers last month, according to the Bloomberg survey median. A Labor Department official reiterated today as the figures were released to the press that all operations and surveys other than the claims data are suspended during the lapse of appropriations. The agency will not release the monthly jobs report if the federal government is closed, according to an Obama administration official earlier this week. Any claims filed by furloughed federal workers will not show up in the figures in coming weeks, another Labor Department official said today. They will be tallied in a separate category and will not influence the headline reading. Economists’ estimates in the Bloomberg survey ranged from claims of 300,000 to 335,000. The Labor Department revised the previous week’s figure to 307,000, from an initially reported 305,000. The jobless claims report showed the four-week moving average, a less volatile measure than the weekly figures, dropped to 305,000 last week, the lowest level since May 2007. The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits jumped by 104,000 to 2.93 million in the week ended Sept. 21. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of Americans receiving extended benefits under federal programs. To contact the reporter on this story: Shobhana Chandra in Washington at schandra1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net

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