US weekly jobless claims slip NEW claims for US unemployment insurance benefits slipped last week to 366,000, still holding roughly in the same range as the past year, the Labor Department reports. Claims in the week to February 2 were 5000 less than the previous week's revised number, while the four-week moving average was 350,500, pulled lower by the sharply lower claims of the middle two weeks of January. Overall the jobs situation in the United States appears to be only slowly improving. On February 1 the government reported that the economy added a middling 157,000 net new jobs, and the jobless rate ticked up to 7.9 per cent. The rate has vacillated between 7.8 per cent and 7.9 per cent since September.