(Bloomberg) — The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell last week as the economy's continued improvement tempered dismissals.
 
Jobless claims decreased by 6,000 to 289,000 in the week ended Dec. 13, the fewest since early November, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 51 economists projected 295,000. Claims have been below 300,000 for 13 of the past 14 weeks.
 

Employers are curtailing dismissals and hiring at the strongest pace since 1999, a sign of a tightening labor market that may put upward pressure on wage growth. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and her colleagues yesterday raised their assessment of the labor market and said they will be patient on the timing of the first interest-rate rate increase.

 

 

 
"Labor demand has in fact picked up a bit," Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities in Stamford, Connecticut, said in a research note. "Chair Yellen set continued improvement in labor market conditions as the key requirement to justify liftoff at some point next year, and the data continue to support that scenario."
 

Stock-index futures held earlier gains after the report. The contract on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index maturing in March climbed 1.1 percent to 2,030.4 at 8:47 a.m. in New York, signaling the gauge will advance for a second day as investors assess the outlook for Fed policy.

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