It was a good news-bad news week in terms of first-time filings for unemployment benefits.
The good news is the number of Americans filing for benefits didn’t increase (it stayed the same). The less-good news is that number is still at an eight-month high.
New applications for jobless benefits numbered 248,000 for the week ending June 7, according to statistics released by the Labor Department Thursday. According to a report from The Associated Press, analysts had predicted 244,000 new applications.
A week ago, there were 248,000 jobless claim applications, which was the most since early October and a sign that layoffs could be trending higher, the AP reported.
Weekly applications for unemployment benefits have mostly remained in a range between 200,000 and 250,000 since Covid hit the country in March 2020.
However, the past three weeks, layoffs have been at the higher end of that range, raising some concern from analysts.
“There are early warning signs in the labor market,” Navy Federal Credit Union’s chief economist, Heather Long, told the AP. “If layoffs worsen this summer, it will heighten fears of a recession and consumer spending pullback.”
Last week, the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers slowed their hiring in May, but still added a solid 139,000 jobs.
The government has estimated that the U.S. economy shrank at a 0.2% annual pace in the first quarter of 2025, a slight upgrade from its first estimate. Growth was slowed by a surge in imports as companies in the U.S. tried to bring in foreign goods before Trump’s massive tariffs went into effect.
The four-week average of jobless claims, which evens out some of the weekly ups and downs during more volatile stretches, rose by 5,000 to 240,250.
The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of May 31 jumped by 54,000 to 1.96 million, the most since November of 2021.
