{"id":5614,"date":"2025-03-27T13:12:15","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T13:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=5614"},"modified":"2025-03-27T13:12:17","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T13:12:17","slug":"us-applications-for-unemployment-benefits-hold-steady-remain-in-recent-healthy-range","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=5614","title":{"rendered":"US applications for unemployment benefits hold steady, remain in recent healthy range"},"content":{"rendered":"
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U.S. applications for unemployment benefits held steady last week, a sign that the labor market remains healthy as companies continue to retain their employees.<\/p>\n

Jobless claim filings ticked down by 1,000 to 224,000 for the week ending March 22, the Labor Department said Thursday. That\u2019s mostly in line with the 225,000 new applications analysts forecast.<\/p>\n

Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs, and have remained mostly in a range between 200,000 and 250,000 for the past few years.<\/p>\n

It remains unclear when job cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency, or \u201cDOGE,\u201d will show up in the weekly layoffs report, though the Labor Department\u2019s February jobs report showed that the federal government shed 10,000 jobs. That\u2019s the most since June of 2022. <\/p>\n

Economists don\u2019t expect the federal workforce layoffs to have much of an impact until the March jobs report, which comes out April 4.<\/p>\n

Those layoffs are part of the Trump administration\u2019s efforts<\/a> to shrink the size of the federal workforce<\/a> through DOGE, spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Senior U.S. officials set the government downsizing<\/a> in motion late last month via a memo<\/a> dramatically expanding President Donald Trump\u2019s efforts to scale back the workforce. Thousands of probationary employees have already been fired<\/a> \u2014 though two federal judges last week issued orders<\/a> requiring the rehiring of thousands of those workers.<\/p>\n

Despite showing some signs of weakening during the past year, the labor market remains healthy with plentiful jobs and relatively few layoffs.<\/p>\n

The Labor Department reported that U.S. employers added a solid 151,000 jobs<\/a> in February, and while the unemployment rate ticked up to a 4.1%, it remains a historically healthy figure.<\/p>\n

Some high-profile companies have announced job cuts already this year, including Workday<\/a>, Dow<\/a>, CNN<\/a>, Starbucks<\/a>, Southwest Airlines<\/a> and Facebook parent company Meta.<\/p>\n

The government’s weekly jobless claims report includes a four-week average of applications, meant to even out some of the week-to-week swings. That fell by 4,750 to 224,000.<\/p>\n

The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of March 15 declined by 25,000 to 1.86 million.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. applications for unemployment benefits held steady last week, a sign that the labor market remains healthy as companies continue to retain their employees. Jobless claim filings ticked down by 1,000 to 224,000 for the week ending March 22, the Labor Department said Thursday. That\u2019s mostly in line with the 225,000 new applications analysts forecast. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5616,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5614\/revisions\/5616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}