Americans are filing fewer first-time claims for unemployment benefits. 

The Labor Department says 420-thousand initial claims were filed in the week ending December 11th.  It’s a decrease of three-thousand from the week before.  The number of claims filed in the week ending December 4th, including continuing claims, was just over four-point-one-million.

New York recorded the largest increase in first-time claims for unemployment for the week ending December 4th.  It blamed the rise of more than six-thousand claims on layoffs in the construction, trade, service, manufacturing and agriculture industries.