WASHINGTON–Initial jobless claims, which essentially represent layoffs, declined by 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 204,000 last week, the Labor Department said in releasing its data on Thursday.
During 2022 claims had mostly trended higher since hitting their lowest levels in over a half-century last spring, but they continue to hover near their 2019 prepandemic levels, noted the Wall Street Journal in its analysis of the numbers.
“Seasonally adjusted jobless-claims figures tend to be volatile around holiday periods. The most recent data captured the week between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays,” the Journal added.
According to the Labor Department, the four-week moving average of weekly claims, which smooths out volatility, fell to 213,750, a decrease of 6,750 from the prior week.
‘Sharp Rise’ Not Expected
“Initial claims data can be noisy around the holidays, but the low level of initial claims is a reminder that employers overall still aren’t laying off large numbers of workers,” Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, was quoted by the Journal as saying. “We don’t expect a sharp rise in initial claims in the near-term even as the economy slows.”
The Labor Department will release its final jobs report for 2022 on Friday.
There were about 10.5 million available jobs in November, essentially unchanged from October, the Labor Department said.
Still Free in ’23! The Freshest CU Headlines. Right to Your Inbox.
The biggest, best and freshest news reporting in credit unions remains free in ’23! Each morning CUToday.info delivers its daily update offering the latest headlines and breaking news right to your email, with the easy-to-read headlines format allowing you to click on the stories that interest you most in order to learn more.
If you haven’t yet signed up for the new email solution on which CUToday.info has partnered with ResponseGenius, you can do so here. Signing up requires less than one minute of your time—and it’s free!
Please note that after signing up you may need to go to your Spam/Junk folder and mark the morning headlines email as safe. CUToday.info does not provide its list of readers and emails to outside parties, and we will not be contacting you to sell you an extended warranty or sending you any links so you may cash in on an inheritance you didn’t know was coming.
And did we mention it’s free?
Please note and/or make your IT department or email administrator aware the emails will be coming from the domains CUTodayinfo.com and CUTodayinfoReply.com.