The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week. The U.S. Labor Department said today that for the work week ending February 14, new applications filed for jobless benefits plunged by a seasonally adjusted 24,000 to 344,000.

That’s the largest decline since the beginning of November and leaves claims at their lowest level since the week ending January 24.

The claims report was better than economists were expecting. They were forecasting claims to decrease to a level of around 351,000 for last week. Part of last week’s decline reflected fewer layoffs in weather-sensitive businesses in some parts of the country that had been previously hard hit by winter’s harsh weather, a Labor Department analyst said.

After hitting a high last year of 459,000 in the middle of April, the number of new jobless claims since then has been drifting downward.

But even as companies have reduce the speed at which they lay off workers, they havent’ been in a rush to hire people back.

Thursday’s report also showed that the number of unemployed people collecting jobless benefits for more than a week rose by 106,000 to 3.2 million for the week ending Feb. 7, the most recent period for which that information is available.