The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits fell modestly last week, remaining in the historically low range since the U.S. economy emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending Aug. 9 fell by 3,000 to 224,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s below the 230,000 new applications that economists had forecast.

Weekly applications for jobless benefits are seen as a proxy for U.S. layoffs and have mostly settled in a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 throttled the economy in the spring of 2020.

Thursday’s report showed that the four-week average of claims, which smooths out some of the week-to-week volatility, ticked up by 750 to 221,750.

The total number of Americans collecting unempl

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