Layoffs remain scarce in the U.S. economy, indicating a rarely achieved level of job security for American workers, data from the Department of Labor showed Thursday.
Initial claims for unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, rose to 211,000 last week from the prior week’s downwardly revised 199,000. This slightly exceeded expectations.
Claims can be volatile week-to-week. For a better read on the underlying health of the labor market, analysts look to the four-week moving average of claims. These ticked up to 203,750 from the downwardly revised average of 203,000 in the prior week.
This combination of low weekly claims and low average claims is historically rare. They’ve only been lower in less than three percent of the weeks dating back to 1967. Weekly claims have only been lower six percent of the time and average claims lower around three percent of the time.
The low-claims weeks are heavily concentrated in just a few periods: 1967-1969, a single week in 2019, several weeks in 2022 as the U.S. emerged from the pandemic, one in 2024, and the prior week this year.
Continuing claims, which are the measure of claims made after the initial application, rose 24,000 to 1,782,000 in the week ended May 2. The previous week’s level was revised down by 8,000 from 1,766,000 to 1,758,000. The 4-week moving average was 1,781,000, a decrease of 6,750 from the previous week’s revised average. The previous week’s average was revised down by 2,000 from 1,789,750 to 1,787,750.
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