The U.S. Labor Department released its jobless claims figures on Thursday. The number of initial jobless claims in the week ending June 20 in the U.S. increased by 3,000 to 271,000 from 268,000 in the previous week. T the previous week's figure was revised down from 267,000.

Analysts had expected the number of initial jobless claims to be 272,000.

Jobless claims remained below 300,000 the 16th straight week. This threshold is associated with the strengthening of the labour market.

Continuing jobless claims rose by 22,000 to 2,247,000 in the week ended June 13.