The number of new applications for unemployment benefits dropped 43,000 last week to 184,000, the lowest level for initial claims in 52 years, a sign that layoffs are very rare as employers try hard to hold on to workers.

Thursday's numbers, reported by the Labor Department, add to the general downward trajectory of jobless claims throughout the year.

The jobless claim figures are the lowest since September 1969, when the Vietnam War was raging, President Richard Nixon was in the first year of his presidency, and the hit show The Brady Bunch had not yet aired. The labor force back then was about 81 million, half of what it is now, making Thursday's numbers more impressive.

"It is another one of those ‘we haven’t seen this before’ moments," said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate. "The level of new job loss is very low, healing from shocking and heartbreaking crisis levels last year."

The jobless claims numbers are perhaps the most encouraging piece of economic data as the country tries to recover from the coronavirus pandemic that ravaged the global economy and precipitated a two-month recession.

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The new jobless numbers came on the tail of a worse-than-expected November jobs report last week. The economy added just 210,000 new jobs in November, far fewer than the half-million expected.

But the news from the separate household survey published in last Friday’s report had some favorable aspects to it. It showed the labor force growing, and the unemployment rate retreated to 4.2%, where it was in mid-2017. The unemployment rate is nevertheless much higher than the 3.5% level it was at prior to the pandemic.

New data released Wednesday found that the number of people quitting their jobs is the third-highest on record. The Department of Labor revealed that some 4.2 million workers quit their jobs in October, down from a record of 4.4 million the month before.

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One factor causing uncertainty about the economy is the omicron variant of the virus, which was recently discovered and branded by the World Health Organization as a “variant of concern.”