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Investors waiting for signs of how the coronavirus is affecting the U.S. economy will have to keep waiting. The latest data point and best high-frequency gauge of the outbreak’s toll—initial claims for unemployment insurance—fell last week.

The Labor Department said Thursday that the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits declined by 4,000 in the week ended March 7, to 211,000. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected an increase to 220,000 from the prior week’s 216,000.

Many traders and investors watch the four-week moving average for jobless claims, which helps smooth out some of the volatility in the weekly employment indicator. On that basis, initial claims stood at 214,000, little changed from an average of 213,000 a week earlier. In the same period a year ago, the four-week moving average was 220,000.

Economists and investors are watching anxiously for indications of how hard the coronavirus will hit domestic economic activity. As schools close, workers stay home, and events are canceled, there will no doubt be a slowdown in activity as the virus spreads and Americans try to avoid getting sick. Much of the economic data released since the virus began to spread in the U.S. has been for February. That data has largely shown an economy that was doing fine before the outbreak, but they haven’t offered much insight into the current state of the economy.

The initial jobless claims series, released every Thursday morning, is key to assessing the outbreak’s economic impact. “In the current environment, any high-frequency information which offers better context for the full fallout on the domestic economy will be salient,” says Ian Lyngen of BMO Capital Markets. “In general, whether the labor market and consumer spending can remain resilient through the outbreak is of the utmost importance for the medium-term outlook,” he said.

For now, jobless claims aren’t signaling that businesses have already started laying off workers as consumer demand shrinks. But it is still too soon to tell.

“So far, there is no evidence of rising layoff activity in states with the largest concentration of cases like Washington and New York, but we expect that change in the weeks ahead, said Nancy Vanden Houten, an economist at Oxford Economics. “We think it’s just a matter of time before the fallout from the coronavirus starts to show up in increased layoff activity.”

Write to Lisa Beilfuss at lisa.beilfuss@barrons.com