The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits has been on something of a roller-coaster lately.
This week, it was down.
Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, according to figures released by the Labor Department, which showed that unemployment claims for the week ending April 20 fell to 207,000, a 5,000-claim drop from the previous week’s 212,000. That’s the fewest since mid-February.
The four-week average of claims, which smooths out some of the weekly up-and-downs, ticked down by 1,250 to 213,250.
Weekly unemployment claims have remained at historically low levels since the pandemic purge of millions of jobs in the spring of 2020.
Last month, U.S. employers added 303,000 jobs. The unemployment rate dropped slightly, from 3.9% to 3.8%, and has now remained below 4% for 26 straight months, the longest such streak since the 1960s.
A total of 1.78 million Americans were collecting jobless benefits during the week that ended April 13, 15,000 fewer than the previous week.
