While the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week went down a bit, the overall number of workers collecting jobless benefits was up.
Both numbers, though, remain at historically low levels.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that filings for unemployment claims for the week ending March 9 ticked down by 1,000 to 209,000 from the previous week’s 208,000, according to statistics released by the U.S. Labor Department.
The four-week average of claims came in at 208,000, a decrease of 500 from the previous week.
Some 1.81 million Americans were collecting jobless benefits during the week that ended March 2, an increase of 17,000 from the previous week. Last week’s number, which had been the most since November, was revised down by 112,000.
Weekly unemployment claims are considered a proxy for the number of U.S. layoffs in a given week. They have remained at historically low levels since the pandemic purge of millions of jobs in the spring of 2020.
