The year that began with fears of an AI-driven jobs apocalypse is now delivering the lowest level of unemployment claims in nearly six decades.

Filings for unemployment benefits fell by 22,000 to 187,000 in the week ending July 18, the Labor Department said Thursday, the fewest since September 1969. Economists had expected 212,000.

Continuing claims, which count people still collecting benefits, fell by 2,000 to 1,796,000.

Initial claims measure new applications for jobless aid and are the closest thing markets have to a real-time layoff tracker.

“There may be some seasonal noise in the data, given summer months tend to be noisy, but the extremely low level of claims is hard to ignore and the trend in continued claims remains encouraging,” said Matthew Martin, senior US economist at Oxford Economics.

The economist now expects the unemployment rate to drop to 4.2% in the coming months, aided by low layoff rates, warmer payroll gains, and weak labor supply growth.