Slightly more Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, but the labor market remains broadly healthy despite an ongoing trade war.
Jobless claim filings inched up by 4,000 to 223,000 for the week ending April 5, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s less than the 225,000 new applications analysts forecast.
Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs, and have mostly ping-ponged between 200,000 and 250,000 for the past few years.
Even though President Donald Trump put a 90-day pause on most of his widespread tariff hikes Wednesday, concerns remain about a global economic slowdown that could upend what has been an incredibly resilient labor market.
Like his pledge to institute tariffs, Trump’s promise to drastically downsize the federal government workforce is fully in motion.
It’s not clear when the job cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency — or “DOGE,” spearheaded by Elon Musk — will surface in the weekly layoffs data,
Federal agencies that have either announced layoffs or are planning cuts include the Department of Health and Human Services, IRS, Small Business Administration, Veterans Affairs and Department of Education.
Despite showing some signs of weakening during the past year, the labor market remains healthy with plentiful jobs and relatively few layoffs.
Last week, the government reported that U.S. employers added a surprisingly strong 228,000 jobs in March and while the unemployment rate inched up to 4.2%, that’s a healthy figure by historical standards.
Some high-profile companies have announced job cuts already this year, including Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines and Facebook parent company Meta.
The four-week average of applications, which aims to smooth out some of the week-to-week swings, was unchanged at 223,000.
The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of March 29 fell by 43,000 to 1.85 million.
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