After a pair of massive hurricanes hit the southeast United States, filings for unemployment benefits jumped to their highest levels in more than a year.
Last week, those numbers came back down to earth, matching more recent ranges.
Applications for jobless claims dropped to 241,000 for the week of Oct. 12, according to statistics released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Labor. That’s a drop of 19,000 claims and was well below the 262,000 analysts were reportedly expecting.
The four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, rose by 4,750 to 236,250.
The total number of Americans collecting jobless benefits rose by 9,000 to about 1.87 million for the week of Oct. 5, the most since late July.
During the first four months of 2024, applications for jobless benefits averaged just 213,000 a week before rising in May. They hit 250,000 in late July, supporting the notion that high interest rates were finally cooling a red-hot U.S. job market, according to a report from The Associated Press.
In August, the Labor Department reported that the U.S. economy added 818,000 fewer jobs from April 2023 through March this year than were originally reported. The revised total was also considered evidence that the job market has been slowing steadily, compelling the Fed to start cutting interest rates.
Despite some signs of labor market slowing, America’s employers added a surprisingly strong 254,000 jobs in September, easing some concerns about a weakening job market and suggesting that the pace of hiring is still solid enough to support a growing economy.
