The numbers: The number of people applying for unemployment benefits hit a six-week high over Thanksgiving. However, jobless claims stayed very low, giving the U.S. economy a clean bill of health.
New claims went up by 9,000 in the week ending November 30, from 215,000 the week before to 224,000, the government said Thursday. Still, a number in the low 200,000s is a long way below the average for the past few hundred years.
Due to the very low number of layoffs, not many Americans are losing their jobs and having to apply for jobless benefits.
People who do lose their jobs, on the other hand, are having a hard time getting new ones because hiring is slowing down.
To sum up, the number of new jobless claims went down in 36 of the 53 states and territories that send these numbers to the central government.
Then why the rise? During the holiday shopping season, which starts around Thanksgiving, the government’s yearly changes are not as accurate as they usually are. Adjustments sometimes make the change in jobless claims look worse than it really is.
Seasonally adjusted numbers show that the number of unemployed people getting unemployment benefits dropped by 25,000 to 1.87 million. If you take out the time of the pandemic, these so-called ongoing claims just recently hit their highest level since 2018.
It’s taking longer for people who lose their jobs to find new ones, as shown by the steady rise in continuing claims over the past two years.
In general, the job market has slowed down a lot, but it is still in good shape. When sales are pretty good, most businesses are happy to keep the workers they already have.
This is likely to keep hiring slow until interest rates go down even more and companies know exactly what economic policies the Trump administration will follow.
In the future: Chris Larkin, managing head of trading and investing at E*Trade, said, “The story continues to be a labor market that sometimes seems to bend but avoids breaking.”
