Officials at the Federal Reserve might not like the fact the number of peope filing unemployment requests keeps falling, but the U.S. economy probably does.
For the third straight week, the number of U.S. workers applying for unemployment assistance dropped, falling to 190,000 in the week ending Feb. 25, according to statistics released Thursday from the U.S. Department of Labor.
That’s a drop of 2,000 applications and represented the seventh straight week applications have come in fewer than 200,000.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been trying to stem the job market in the fight against inflation. In February, the Fed raised its main lending rate by 25 basis points, its eighth rate hike in less than a year. The central bank’s benchmark rate is now in a range of 4.5% to 4.75%, its highest level in 15 years.
The four-week moving average of claims, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, rose by 1,750 to 193,000, remaining below the 200,000 threshold for the sixth straight week.
Raising interest rates hasn’t done much to slow the job market. Last month, the government reported that employers added a better-than expected 517,000 jobs in January and that the unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, the lowest level since 1969.
About 1.66 million people were collecting unemployment assistance the week that ended Feb. 18, a decrease of 5,000 from the week before, according to the Labor Department.
