"In the week ending August 22, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 1,006,000, a decrease of 98,000 from the previous week's revised level", the department said in a news release.
Continuous weekly claims showed filings from 14.54 million Americans, down from the previous week’s revised number of 14.76 million.
The insured unemployment rate also dropped slightly to 10.2 percent for the week ending 15 August, from the previous week's unrevised rate of 10.6 percent.
Weekly jobless claims stood as high as 6.6 million in early April at the height of economic lockdowns forced by the US COVID-19 outbreak. They have stabilised since at around 1 million weekly.
The United States has reported more than 5.8 million cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and more than 179,000 COVID-19 related deaths as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally.
