American applications for unemployment benefits catapulted to an almost four-year high last week, the Associated Press reports, in the latest sign of a softening labor market.
The Labor Department said Thursday that U.S. jobless benefits claims for the week ending Sept. 6 climbed by 27,000 to 263,000 — the most filings since the week of Oct. 23, 2021 and much higher than the 231,000 economists had expected.
Thursday’s report showed that the four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, rose by 9,750 to 240,500.
The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the previous week of Aug. 30 was unchanged at 1.94 million.
Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs. They have mostly settled in a historically low range between 200,000-250,000 since the U.S. emergence from the COVID-19 pandemic.
