THE number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell by 23,000 last week, further evidence the US job market is slowly returning to health. Applications for unemployment aid declined to a seasonally adjusted 340,000 in the week ending May 18, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That's down from 363,000 the previous week and a level consistent with solid job gains. The less volatile four-week average ticked down just 500 to 339,500. That's close to the five-year low of 338,000 registered during the first week of May. The four-week average is 9 per cent lower than in November. Unemployment claims are a proxy for layoffs. The decline in claims has coincided with steady job growth over the past six months. Since November, employers have added an average 208,000 jobs a month. That's up from just 138,000 jobs a month during the previous six months. Still, much of the improvement has come from fewer layoffs, not robust hiring. Employers laid off just 1.7 million workers in March, only slightly above the 12-year low reached in January. Overall hiring, however, remains far below pre-recession levels. More than 4.7 million Americans were receiving unemployment benefits the week ending May 4, down 23 per cent from nearly 6.2 million a year earlier. The United States still has 2.6 million fewer jobs than it did when the recession began in December 2007. The unemployment rate has fallen to a four-year low of 7.5 per cent, down from 10 per cent in October 2009. But some of the decrease is because many people have given up looking for work. The government counts people as unemployed only if they are actively searching for a job.