The amounts: The Labor Department said Thursday that the number of initial jobless claims dropped by 12,000 to 216,000 in the week ending October 26. This is the third week in a row that weekly claims have gone down. It’s been since May that claims have been this low.
The Wall Street Journal asked economists and found that they thought the number of new claims would go up by 3,000 to 230,000.
Claims dropped by 14,000 to 228,000 last week. The first guess was that the number would drop by 15,000 to 227,000.
Important facts: The most recent week saw a drop in the number of new claims based on real filings, that is, before seasonal adjustments. The number fell to 200,132.
The government said that during the week of October 19–22, the number of people already getting unemployment payments dropped by 26,000, to 1.86 million.
Big picture: Claims went up to 260,000 in early October because of Hurricane Helene, but they have now gone back down to levels that show the job market is not under any stress, according to experts.
In the future: “It still looks like companies are cutting jobs instead of laying people off to save money on labor costs.” “The Challenger job cuts and other leading indicators of claims that we track almost certainly point to this continuing, at least for now,” said Oliver Allen, senior U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
