The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefit fell last week but remains at persistently high levels as companies across the US seek to slash costs.

According to official data published today, 554,000 Americans lost their jobs last week, down 21,000 from the week before. Economists were quick to point out that the decline did not indicate that unemployment has peaked. With around 6.7 per cent of the American workforce out of a job, Wall Street expects that figure to rise to as high as 10 per cent next year.

While 554,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefit, the number is a gross figure and does not include the number of workers re-entering the jobs market. Overall, around 240,000 are losing their jobs a month, according to Washington's Bureau for Labour Statistics.

As the jobless numbers were published, Fedex, the US parcel delivery firm based in Memphis, Tennessee, said that it was trying to avoid deep redundancies by cutting non-union worker pay by 5 per cent, cancelling bonuses and suspending its voluntary retirement savings schemes.

Ian Shepherdson, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics, said: "Claims look very high but, when they are adjusted for population growth, they remain far below the peaks seen in the deep recessions of the 1970s and 1980s. To match the 1982 peak, population-adjusted, claims would now have to rise to just over 1 million. We hope that won't happen but the scope for further hefty increases is real."

Last week's decline in the rate of increase of newly unemployed is unlikely to play out in the short term. Yesterday, Chrysler, the US carmaker, said it was temporarily closing all its 30 American factories for at least a month to cut capacity in line with collapsing demand.

Ford and General Motors have also cut production over Christmas. The three automakers are desperately awaiting help from the White House, which is examining the vehicle groups' books and devising a means for the manufacturers to tap the $700 billion rescue package that had been earmarked for bailing out Wall Street.

General Motors and Chrysler have both warned that, without immediate federal assistance, they will run out of money by the end of the year. The US car industry provides around 3 million jobs across the country.

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