In another sign that the job market is recovering after last year’s coronavirus recession, the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits slumped down to a fresh pandemic low last week.

Last week, jobless claims plummetted by 14,000 to 269,000 last week. The weekly applications, since topping 900,000 in early January, fell more or less steadily ever since. Now, they are moving toward pre-pandemic levels of around 220,000 a week.

Overall, 2.1 million Americans were collecting unemployment checks the week of October 23 — down from 7.1 million a year earlier.

In another pandemic low, the four-week average of claims dropped below 285,000.

Since the pandemic struck the US job market in the spring of 2020, the economy has been rebounding. In 2020 March and April, employers cut down more than 22 million jobs as lockdowns were ordered by the governments as a health precaution in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

The economy recovered 17 million of the jobs lost to the pandemic. Tomorrow, the US will announce its closely watched monthly report on jobless claims.

Economists are of the opinion that the employers added 400,000 jobs in October, more than twice the jobs added in September.

“Claims are headed in the right direction, showing the labor market recovery continues, albeit slowly,” wrote economists with Contingent Macro Research on Thursday.

“Moreover, some state-level volatility appears to be easing, and seasonal adjustments were minor and should remain so for the next few weeks,” they added.

Due to the government relief checks and rollout of vaccines, consumers have been given newfound confidence to resume spending. This increasing demand has posed the companies with a lot of difficulties, keeping in mind the surging demand.

The companies said that they can’t find workers to fill their job openings — a near-record 10.4 million in August. They added that they are forced to raise wages, offer signing bonuses and improve benefits and working conditions.