GS Goldman Sachs Group Inc

WASHINGTON—The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits fell last week, another sign of the domestic job market's resilience in the face of economic turmoil overseas.

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs across the U.S., fell by 16,000 to a seasonally adjusted 269,000 in the week ended Feb. 6, the Labor Department said Thursday.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected 280,000 new claims last week. Claims for the prior week were unrevised at 285,000.

Jobless claims data tends to be volatile from week to week, but have generally been falling since 2009 and have held at historically low levels for months, consistent with ongoing job creation. But despite last week's fall, the four-week moving average of initial claims has steadily crept up since the end of October, when it hit a postrecession low of 259,250.

Since then, it has risen by more than 20,000 to 281,250, a trend Goldman Sachs economists called "more than just noise" in a recent analyst note. Last week's figures are also considered to be free of the seasonal volatility of the postholiday period, in which companies may be laying off temporary hires like retail or warehousing workers.

Job growth slowed in January, as employers added just 151,000 jobs, a sharp fall from 2015's monthly average of 228,000. That robust job creation gave the Federal Reserve leeway to raise interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade in December. But January's weaker reading and continued turmoil in emerging economies and financial markets have clouded the timeline for further rate increases this year.

Thursday's report showed the number of continuing unemployment benefit claims—those drawn by workers for more than a week—fell by 21,000 to 2,239,000 in the week ended Jan. 30. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag. Some economists worry that low claims figures signal a lack of dynamism in the labor market, or could reflect a population of long-term unemployed that isn't eligible to file new claims.

Write to Anna Louie Sussman at anna.sussman@wsj.com and Kate Davidson at kate.davidson@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 11, 2016 09:05 ET (14:05 GMT)

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