The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance fell last week, the government said Thursday.

There were 457,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended March 13, down 5,000 from a revised 462,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said in a weekly report.

A consensus estimate of economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected new claims to drop to 455,000.

The government said 4,579,000 people filed continuing claims in the week ended March 6, the most recent data available. That's up 12,000 from the preceding week's revised 4,567,000 claims.