Jobless claims fall sharply

Number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits drops to a three-month low.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits dropped sharply from last week to a three-month low, according to a government report released Thursday.

The Labor Department said that initial filings for state jobless benefits fell 24,000 to 467,000 for the week ended Jan. 3.

That figure was the lowest since the week ending Oct. 11, when initial claims were at 463,000.

Economists polled by Briefing.com expected the reading to come in at 550,000 claims.

Jobless claims have eased for the past two weeks since surging to a 26-year high of 589,000 claims reported for the week ended Dec. 20. However, both of the declines came in weeks that included major holidays - New Year's Day last week and Christmas Day the previous week.

Joshua Shapiro, an economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc., said that he thinks the impact of the holidays clouded the report, and that weekly claims data won't show underlying trends until the first or second week of February.