Filings for U.S. unemployment benefits rose to their highest level in eight months last week but remain historically low despite growing uncertainty about how tariffs could impact the broader economy, the Associated Press reports.
New applications for jobless benefits rose by 8,000 to 247,000 for the week ending May 31, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s the most since early October. Analysts had forecast 237,000 new applications.
Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered representative of U.S. layoffs and have mostly bounced around a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 throttled the economy five years ago, wiping out millions of jobs.
A report earlier this week also showed that the number of Americans quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence in their prospects — fell, while layoffs ticked higher, and in another sign that the job market has cooled from the hiring boom of 2021-23, the Labor Department reported one job for every unemployed person. As recently as December 2022, there were two vacancies for every jobless American.
The four-week average of jobless claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, rose by 4,500 to 235,000, the most since late October. The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of May 24 inched down by 3,000 to 1.9 million.
