The numbers of American workers seeking unemployment benefits dropped last week despite some concern about a potentially weakening job market.
According to statistics released by the Labor Department Thursday, filings for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 10 fell to 198,000, 9,000 fewer than the previous week. The figure was significantly less than the 215,000 that analysts polled by the data firm FactSet were expecting, the Associated Press reported.
Last week, the government reported that hiring remained sluggish in December, with employers adding just 50,000 jobs. That’s after a downwardly revised figure of 56,000 in November, the Labor Department said Friday. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.4%, its first decline since June, from 4.5% in November, a figure also revised lower, according to the AP report.
Businesses and government agencies posted 7.1 million open jobs at the end of November, a drop from the 7.4 million posted in October.
The Federal Reserve last month trimmed its benchmark lending rate by a quarter-point, its third straight cut. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said members of the committee are increasingly concerned that the job market is even weaker than it appears, acc. Powell suggested that recent job figures could be revised lower by as much as 60,000, which would mean employers have actually been shedding an average of about 25,000 jobs a month since the spring, when the Trump administration rolled out its sweeping import taxes.
Companies that have recently announced job cuts include UPS, General Motors, Amazon and Verizon.
The Labor Department also reported the four-week average of jobless claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, fell by 6,500 to 205,000. The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the previous week ending Jan. 3 declined by 19,000 to 1.88 million, the government said.
