There were slightly fewer Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week.
Application for unemployment assistance fell to 217,000 during the week of Nov. 4, according to statistics released Thursday by the Labor Department. That’s a slight drop of 3,000 claims from the previous week.
The four-week moving average of claims rose to 212,250, an increase of 1,500 from the week before.
Overall, there were 1.83 million people collecting unemployment benefits the week that ended Oct. 28, up by some 22,000 more over the previous week. That’s the most since April.
Those “continuing claims,” analysts suggest, are rising because many of those who are already unemployed now be having a harder time finding new work, the Associated Press reported.
The numbers come in the midst of an effort by the Federal Reserve to get inflation back down to its 2% target. Fed officials opted to leave the benchmark rate alone following its most recent meeting, but it has raised rates 11 times since March 2022.
U.S. economic growth surged in the July-September quarter on the back of robust consumer spending. The Labor Department reported last week that employers posted 9.6 million job openings in September, a slight increase from the 9.5 million posted in August. Layoffs fell to 1.5 million from 1.7 million.
The U.S. economy added a modest 150,000 jobs in October.
