By MATT OTT, Associated Press Business Writer
The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell modestly last week, remaining within the same range of recent years.
Jobless claim filings fell by 6,000 to 219,000 for the week ending March 29, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s less than the 226,000 new applications analysts forecast.
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.
However, following the Trump administration’s announcement of widespread tariff hikes yesterday, economists are worried about a global economic slowdown that could upend what has been an incredibly resilient labor market.
Like his pledge to institute tariffs, Trump’s promise to drastically downsize the federal government workforce is fully in motion.
It’s not clear when the job cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” will surface in the weekly layoffs data, but some economists have suggested they could show up in the Labor Department’s March jobs report, which comes out Friday.
The February jobs report showed that the federal government shed 10,000 jobs, the most since June of 2022.
On Monday, some workers at the Food and Drug Administration were told to pack their laptops and prepare for the possibility that they wouldn’t be back, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press.
The mass dismissals are expected to result in 20,000 fewer jobs — nearly a quarter of its staff — at the Department of Health and Human Services. About 10,000 jobs will be eliminated through layoffs, while another 10,000 workers took early retirement and voluntary separation offers.
Other federal agencies that have either announced layoffs or are planning cuts include the IRS, Small Business Administration, Veterans Affairs and Department of Education.
The layoffs are part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce through “DOGE,” spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk.
Despite showing some signs of weakening during the past year, the labor market remains healthy with plentiful jobs and relatively few layoffs.
The government reported that U.S. employers added a solid 151,000 jobs in February, and while the unemployment rate inched up to 4.1%, it remains a healthy figure by historical standards. Analysts surveyed by data firm FactSet forecast that nonfarm payrolls in March will show an increase of 130,000 and that the unemployment rate will tick up to 4.2%.
Some high-profile companies have announced job cuts already this year, including Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines and Facebook parent company Meta.
The four-week average of applications, which aims to smooth out some of the week-to-week swings, fell by 1,250 to 223,000.
The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of March 22 increased by 56,000 to 1.9 million. That’s the most since November of 2021.
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