New applications for unemployment benefits rose 17,000 to 233,000 in the third week of January, the Department of Labor reported Thursday.

Forecasters had expected jobless claims to tick up to around 240,000, after scraping the lowest level in nearly 45 years the week before.

Low claims are a good sign. They suggest that layoffs are rare and that hiring is strong. Economists and officials at the Federal Reserve pay attention to the numbers because they are released weekly.

The good news of the past few weeks may have been inflated by problems adjusting for seasonal variations, and the claims collections process is still not back to normal in hurricane-hit Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Still, the extreme low levels of claims indicate that next weeks jobs report could be a good one.

Last week's number of claims was the lowest since February of 1973, when Richard Nixon was president and the workforce was about half the size it is today.

Economists reckon that any number of claims below the 300,000 mark, roughly, suggests that job creation is high enough to keep unemployment steady or tending down.

At 4.1 percent in December, unemployment is already the lowest it's been in decades, and job gains in recent months have been roughly twice as high as needed to send it lower.

President Trump "has a lot to crow about at Davos this year with the labor market running so hot that companies are having to call back workers who had dropped out and were sitting on the sidelines," noted Chris Rupkey, an economist for MUFG.

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have called for policies meant not just to push down unemployment, but also boost workforce participation by encouraging sidelined workers to re-enter the job market.