The Department of Labour said 469,000 initial jobless claims were filed in the week ending February 27, versus 495,000 the week before.

It was the first fall in three weeks and just enough to beat market expectations. Analysts had predicted the seasonally adjusted claims would hit 470,000.

In the week to February 20, a total of 4.5 million Americans claimed unemployment benefits, a decrease of 134,000 on the previous week's revised figure of 4.6 million.

The US government will on Friday present its estimate of how many Americans were unemployed in February, a key indicator of the health of the economy.

"A sharp uptick in employment would indicate the recession is ending, while more job losses would indicate a double dip recession is more imminent," said Peter Morici at the University of Maryland.

Amid its most severe recession in decades the US economy has shed millions of jobs, pushing the unemployment rate to 9.7 percent in January