Exciting news in economic data today….The Labor Department reported that people applying for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level in seven weeks. Applications for benefits dropped by 14,000 to a seasonally adjusted 418,000.Claims for the prior week were revised up to 432,000 from an original reading of 428,000. Economists had expected new requests for jobless benefits to drop to 424,000. The average of new claims over the past four weeks fell by 3,000 to 424,750.Continuing claims fell 43,000 to 3.68 million in the week ended June 25. Overall, 7.46 million people received some form of state or federal benefit in the week of June 18, down 61,327 from the prior week.Not only were jobless claims down in the month but private sector jobs were up. Private sector companies in the U.S. increased adding 157,000 jobs in the month of June, according to the Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) report.The job reading in June is higher than what analysts had expected of a increase of 70,000. The ADP announced that the goods-price sector totaled 27,000 jobs in June along with 24,000 in manufacturing. As for the service sector, it added 130,000 jobs.