Jobless Claims Rise by 4,000, Indicating ‘Broadly Healthy’ Labor Market

The number of Americans filing initial claims for unemployment insurance rose by 4,000 during the week ended Saturday (April 5), the Department of Labor said in a Thursday (April 10) press release.

The number of jobless claims rose to 223,000, up from the previous week’s 219,000, according to the release.

The four-week moving average was unchanged from the previous week, remaining at 223,000, per the release.

The increase in initial claims was marginal, with layoffs remaining historically low, and the total number of jobless claims matched economists’ forecasts for the week, Reuters reported Thursday.

The slight increase indicated that the labor market remains “broadly healthy,” AP reported Thursday, adding that the analysts it surveyed had predicted 225,000 new applications.

The Department of Labor also reported Thursday that the number for insured unemployment dropped by 43,000 during the week ended March 29. It dropped to 1,850,000, down from the previous week’s revised level of 1,893,000, according to the press release.

The insured unemployment rate remained at 1.2%, unchanged from the previous week.

The state with the greatest increase in initial claims during the week ended March 29 was Kentucky, which added 2,810. In comments supplied to the Department of Labor, the state attributed the rise to layoffs in the manufacturing industry.

Illinois, which had the second largest increase, adding 1,286 initial claims, said it saw layoffs in four sectors: transportation and warehousing, construction, wholesale trade and retail trade.

No state had a decrease of more than 1,000 initial claims during the week, per the release.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported April 1 that the number of job openings in the U.S. declined to 7.57 million in February, down from 7.76 million in January and 8.45 million in February 2024.

Reporting these figures in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS), the Bureau characterized the month-over-month decline as “little changed” but noted that the year-over-year drop amounted to 877,000 fewer job openings.

Bloomberg reported at the time that the JOLTS figures for job openings remained largely stabilized at a level around where they were before the pandemic and that the decline in the number of available positionssignaled a labor market that is “only gradually cooling.”