The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week but layoffs remain in the historically healthy range of the past few years.
U.S. filings for jobless aid in the week ended August 1 rose by 1,000 to 199,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The previous week’s figure was revised up by 1,000 to 198,000.
Weekly filings for unemployment benefits are considered representative of layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the U.S. job market.
Last week, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation metric, personal consumption expenditures, came in at 3.7% for June, still well above the U.S. central bank’s 2% target. If inflation remains elevated, Fed officials say they are ready to raise interest rates to combat higher prices, raising costs for businesses and making them less likely to hire.
Last month, the government reported that employers pulled back on hiring in June, adding only 57,000 jobs. That’s less than half the previous month’s total and a sign that companies remain cautious about adding to their head counts. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.2% from 4.3% in May, though that decline is mostly because many out-of-work people gave up looking for jobs and were no longer counted as unemployed.
June’s tepid hiring comes after a relative surge in job gains the previous three months, countering concerns that the conflict in Iran could trip up an already wobbly labor market. The government’s July jobs report is due out Friday.
Weekly jobless aid applications have stabilized in a range mostly between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. economy emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic recession. However, hiring began slowing about two years ago and tapered further in 2025 due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his purge of the federal workforce and the lingering effects of high interest rates meant to control inflation.
Among the companies that have trimmed their workforce recently are Verizon, UPS, Amazon, Disney, Starbucks, Walmart and Microsoft.
The Labor Department’s report Thursday also showed that the four-week moving average of weekly jobless claims, which balances out some of the weekly volatility, fell by 4,500 to 198,750.
The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ended July 25 was 1.8 million, an increase of 24,000 from the week before.
—Michelle Chapman, AP Business Writer