Washington– More Americans sought unemployment benefits last week, but layoffs remain low despite economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus. Iran war.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that unemployment claims rose to 215,000, up from 210,000 the previous week. The four-week moving average of claims, which smoothes out week-to-week fluctuations, rose by about 6,300 to 209,000.
“Initial claims remain impressively low, near historic lows,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a commentary. “The rise from last week to this week is trivial in a labor market of 159 million workers.”
The number of Americans registering for unemployment benefits — an indicator of layoffs — has stabilized in a low range of mostly 200,000 to 250,000 weekly since the U.S. economy emerged from a brief but nasty pandemic recession in 2020.
The total number of people receiving unemployment aid rose by 15,000 to 1.79 million in the week ending May 16.
The persistently low number of claims indicates that most US companies have not resorted to layoffs. But even if they didn’t cut jobs, employers didn’t add much either. Last year, businesses, nonprofits and government agencies added fewer than 10,000 jobs a month, the weakest hiring outside of the recession years since 2002.
Job creation has risen slightly so far this year — to an average of 76,000 jobs per month from January through April. By contrast, employers added 122,000 jobs per month in 2024 and averaged nearly 400,000 per month from 2021 through 2023 as the economy recovered from coronavirus shutdowns.
But the United States now needs fewer jobs to keep the unemployment rate from rising. President Donald Trump Crackdowns on immigration and the ongoing retirement of baby boomers mean that the monthly “break-even rate” of monthly employment may reach zero. In fact, the unemployment rate — 4.3% in April — has remained low By historical standards.
The Iran war has cast a shadow over the economic outlook as rising energy prices put pressure on consumers and businesses. Iran responded to the American and Israeli attacks by turning to economic warfare, closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, and causing the largest interruption of global oil supplies in history. In response, gasoline prices in the United States rose to an average of $4.43 per gallon from an average of $2.98 per gallon on the eve of the conflict, according to AAA.