WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The number of Americans who applied to receive unemployment benefits in the first week of the new year fell to the lowest level since the end of November.

The holiday season tends to make the figures more volatile and therefore less reliable as a bellwether of labor-market trends. However, other recent reports also have signaled a firmer tone to the jobs market.

In the seven-days ended Jan. 4, initial jobless claims fell by 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 330,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That matched the forecast of economists polled by MarketWatch.

U.S. stocks SPX, -1.11% opened with an early advance following the data.

The average of new claims over the past month, usually a more reliable gauge than the weekly number, dropped by 9,750 to 349,000. That brings the numbers close to where they were before Thanksgiving, in late November.

Weekly claims, typically seen as good proxy for layoffs, have seesawed over the past few months, as they usually do during the holiday season. States tend to process applications more slowly because of office closures, and some people wait longer than usual to file claims.

The weekly report usually returns to more normal patterns by the end of January.

Yet other labor market indicators signal that companies have ramped up hiring, and many economists expect employment to further strengthen in 2014.

After years of stagnation, it looks like the labor sector is finally starting to recover. Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisers tells MarketWatch News Break the improvement is real. Listen to his comments.

On Wednesday, giant payroll processor ADP reported that 238,000 private-sector jobs were created in December, the biggest gain in more than a year. The ADP job numbers move in the same direction as the government’s official employment report over time, though sometimes there are big discrepancies from month to month.

The Labor Department’s jobs data, released Friday, is also expected to show a robust pickup in hiring. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch project a 193,000 increase in net employment last month, tracking closely with the 190,000 average through the first 11 months of 2013. That’s the best stretch of hiring since the recession ended in mid-2009.

Meanwhile, the government said continuing jobless claims increased by 50,000 to a seasonally adjusted 2.87 million in the week ended Dec. 28. Continuing claims, reported with a one-week delay, reflect the number of people already receiving benefits.

About 1.29 million Americans received extended federal benefits in the week ended Dec. 21, the most recent data available. Extended benefits ended on Dec. 31 after Congress failed to reauthorize them, so those people are no longer receiving extra cash.

Democrats are pushing to renew the program, but Republicans insist that spending cuts be found elsewhere in the U.S. budget to offset the estimated $26 billion annual cost.

Extended benefits were first authorized in 2008 during the waning days of the Bush administration after the U.S. plunged into its worst recession since the 1930s.

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