The US Department of Labor reported that the number of Americans applying for state unemployment benefits fell by 55,000 to 787,000 last week.
At the same time, it stated that the number of the country's inhabitants who receive state benefits for more than the initial week decreased by one million to 8.4 million.
This decline signals that some of the unemployed have been called back to their original jobs or found a new job.
At the same time, however, this suggests that many unemployed Americans have stopped receiving standard state aid, which is usually paid for six months, and have switched to an extended benefit program lasting an additional three months.
The still high number of new unemployed applying for state support indicates that a full recovery from the pandemic-induced recession remains a long way off.
Indeed, job creation in the United States has slowed over the past three months, with the US economy still lacking 10.7 million jobs to return to the pre-pandemic level of employment.