US jobless claim applications fell by 13,000 last week as layoffs remain low

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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. applications for unemployment benefits fell by 13,000 last week, remaining in the same historically healthy range of the past few years even as concerns grow about the health of the labor market.

The number of Americans applying for jobless claims for the week ending Dec. 13 declined by 13,000 to 224,000 from the previous week’s 237,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s more than analysts’ forecast of 200,000 new applications.

Applications for unemployment aid are viewed as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

Earlier this week, the government reported that the U.S. gained a decent 64,000 jobs in November but lost 105,000 in October as federal workers departed after cutbacks by the Trump administration.

The unemployment rate rose to 4.6% last month, the highest since 2021.

The November job gains were higher than the 40,000 economists had forecast. The October job losses were caused by a 162,000 drop in federal workers, many of whom resigned at the end of fiscal year 2025 on Sept. 30 under pressure from billionaire Elon Musk’s purge of U.S. government payrolls.

Labor Department revisions also knocked 33,000 jobs off August and September payrolls.

Hiring has clearly lost momentum, hobbled by uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the lingering effects of the high interest rates the Fed engineered in 2022 and 2023 to rein in an outburst of pandemic-induced inflation. Since March, job creation has fallen to an average 35,000 a month, compared to 71,000 in the year ended in March.

Last week, the Federal Reserve trimmed its benchmark lending rate by a quarter-point, its third straight cut.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the committee reduced borrowing costs out of concern that the job market is even weaker than it appears. Powell said that recent job figures could be revised lower by as much as 60,000, which would mean employers have actually been shedding an average of about 25,000 jobs a month since the spring.

Companies that have recently announced job cuts include UPS, General Motors, Amazon and Verizon, but those workforce reductions can take months to show up in the government’s data.

The Labor Department's report Thursday also showed that the four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, rose by 500 to 217,500.

The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the previous week ending Dec. 6 rose by 67,000 to 1.9 million, the government said.