Washington– The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell last week in a sign that overall layoffs remain low, even with many… High-profile companies They announced job cuts.
US unemployment claims in the week ending November 22 fell by 6,000 from the previous week to 216,000, the Labor Department said. reported Wednesday. That number is lower than economists’ expectations of 230,000, according to a survey by data provider FactSet.
Claims for unemployment benefits are viewed as an indicator of layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the labor market. Recently announced job cuts by major companies like UPS and Amazon typically take weeks or months to fully implement and may not yet be reflected in claims data.
The four-week average claims, which smoothes out some week-to-week fluctuations, fell by 1,000 to 223,750.
Right now, the US job market appears to be stuck in a dead end “Low staffing, low fire.” A state that has kept the unemployment rate historically low, but left the unemployed struggling to find a new job.
The government said the total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the week ending November 15 rose by 7,000 to 1.96 million. The increase indicates that the unemployed are taking longer to find new work.
The government said last week that employment I picked up a bit in SeptemberWhen employers added 119,000 new jobs. However, the report also showed that employers shed jobs in August. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4%, its highest level in four years, as more Americans went out of work to look for work but did not find jobs immediately.
The government announced this on Tuesday Retail sales slowed in September after three months of healthy increases. Consumer confidence It fell to its second lowest level In five years, while the wholesale inflation rate declined slightly.
The data suggests that both the economy and inflation are slowing, boosting financial markets’ expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut its key interest rate at its next meeting on December 9-10.