
In a week when the Federal Reserve kept its interest rates steady due to a job market they called “solid,” the number of Americans filing for jobless benefits fell last week.
Applications for unemployment benefits fell to 207,000 for the week ending Jan. 25, according to statistics released by the Labor Department Thursday. That’s drop of 16,000 in a week when analysts were expecting 225,000 new applications.
The four-average, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, ticked down by 1,000 to 212,500. The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of Jan. 18 fell by 42,000 to 1.86 million. That’s after it had risen to 1.9 million the previous week, the highest total since November 2021.