THE ECONOMY

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell last week to 314,000, seasonally adjusted, from a revised 319,000 the week before, the Labor Department said. It was the third consecutive week of claims exceeding 300,000 and followed a nine-week stretch of weekly numbers below that mark, the longest since 1973. A four-week moving average of claims, which smooths out fluctuations in the volatile data, rose by 4,750 to an 11-week high of 306,250. The unemployment rate in March stood at a 29-year low of 4.2%.