WASHINGTON (Reuters] – Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefit benefits last week, close to the pre-pandemic level. The labor market recovery gained momentum but a dearth of workers still hinders faster job gains.

According to the Labor Department, initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 1,000 to an adjusted seasonally adjusted 268,000. This was for the week ending Nov. 13. This was the lowest figure since the COVID-19 epidemic in the United States began more than twenty months ago.

Reuters polled economic experts and predicted that there would be 260,000 applications for the job in the week ending September 1.

In mid-March 2020, claims fell for the seventh consecutive week. They were just below 256,000. This is a sign of a healthy labor force.

These numbers have fallen from an all-time high of 6.149 millions in April 2020.

These data suggest that economic activity has been improving, consistent with previous data. This follows a slump in the economy caused by the devastating effects of the Delta virus. On Tuesday, the government reported an increase in retail sales for October. Factory production also saw a sharp rebound last month.

This data included claims data that covered the period in which government survey business establishments during November’s nonfarm payrolls portion of the employment report.

The trend in claims has been lower since October, which could indicate stronger job growth. The pandemic, which lasted nearly two years, has created a shortage of workers. As a result there were 10.4million job opportunities as of September.

Oct. saw the creation of 531,000 new jobs. The average monthly employment growth rate has been 582,000, and the number of workers is 3 million lower than it was before the pandemic.