If there’s concern about how U.S. trade policies might affect the job market, that concern is not showing up in the number of unemployment applications American workers are seeking.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits dropped last week, despite any of that uncertainty.
Jobless claim applications fell to 228,000 for the week ending May 3, according to statistics released by the Labor Department Thursday. It’s 13,000 fewer than the previous week, but still in line with the 229,000 new applications analysts forecast.
Weekly applications for jobless benefits have mostly remained between 200,000 and 250,000 since Covid hit the United States in March 2020 and wiped out millions of jobs.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve held its benchmark lending rate at 4.3% for the third straight meeting, after cutting it three times in a row at the end of last year.
Fed chair Jerome Powell said the risks of both higher unemployment and inflation have risen, an unusual combination that complicates the central bank’s dual mandate of controlling prices and keeping unemployment low.
Powell said that tariffs have dampened consumer and business sentiment but that data has not yet shown significant harm to the economy.
Last week the government reported that U.S. employers added 177,000 jobs in April. The unemployment rate held at a historically healthy 4.2%; however, many economists anticipate that a negative impact from trade wars will materialize this year for American workers.
The Labor Department also reported that the four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week gyrations, inched up by 1,000 to 227,000.
The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of April 26 fell to 1.88 million, a decrease of 29,000.
