WASHINGTON — New claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week as layoffs ease and hiring slowly recovers.

The decline brought the four-week average of claims, which smooths volatility, to its lowest level since September 2008, when the financial crisis intensified. The report is an encouraging sign that the economy is getting closer to generating job gains, economists said.

"We're on the cusp of a hiring recovery," said Zach Pandl, an economist at Nomura Securities, said today.

The Labor Department said today that first-time claims for jobless benefits dropped by 14,000 to a seasonally adjusted 442,000. That's below analysts' estimates of 450,000, according to Thomson Reuters.

Most of the drop resulted from a change in the calculations the department makes to seasonally adjust the data, a Labor Department analyst said.

The department updates its seasonal adjustment methods every year, and revises its data for the previous five years. Seasonal adjustment attempts to filter out expected changes in employment such as the layoff of temporary retail employees after the winter holidays. The goal of seasonally adjusted figures is to provide a more accurate picture of underlying economic trends.

Excluding seasonal adjustment, initial claims fell by more than 30,000 last week to 405,557.