A number of high-profile companies have announced layoffs in recent weeks, but if applications for jobless benefits are any indication, it doesn’t seem to be impacting the nation’s unemployment rate.
The number of Americans applying for unemployment assistance fell to its lowest level in five weeks, dropping to 201,000 for the week ending Feb. 17, according to statistics released Thursday by the U.S. Labor Department.
That’s a drop of some 12,000 applications from the week before.
The four-week average of claims fell by 3,500 to 215,250, down from 218,750 the previous week.
Some 1.86 million Americans overall were collecting jobless benefits during the week that ended Feb. 10, a decrease of 27,000 from the previous week.
Weekly unemployment claims have remained at historically low levels in recent years, despite efforts by the U.S. Federal Reserve to cool the economy.
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark borrowing rate 11 times beginning in March 2022 in an effort to bring down the four-decade high inflation that took hold after the economy roared back from the COVID-19 recession of 2020.
