WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits inched up last week but remains within the historically healthy range of recent years.
U.S. jobless aid applications for the week ending April 18 rose by 6,000 to 214,000, up from the previous week’s 208,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s slightly more than the 210,000 new applications analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet were expecting.
Filings for unemployment
benefits are considered a proxy for U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.
The Iran war, now in its eighth week, has injected a large degree of uncertainty about how it will affect the U.S. and global economies even as Iran and the U.S. remain under a ceasefire agreement.
U.S. financial markets have rebounded to record levels and prices for a barrel of U.S. crude oil have settled in around $94 per barrel. That’s better than the $112 earlier this month, but still 40% higher than before the war began. Gas prices also remain elevated, saddling businesses and consumers with higher costs.
The largest monthly jump in gas prices in six decades sent consumer prices up 3.3% in March from a year earlier, the Labor Department recently reported. That’s up sharply from just 2.4% in February and the biggest yearly increase since May 2024. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.9% in March from February, the largest such increase in nearly four years.
This comes at a time when U.S. inflation was already above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, further diminishing the chances of an interest rate cut by central bank officials any time soon. Lower interest rates can boost the economy and hiring, but also tend to fuel inflation.
Fed officials voted to cut rates three times to close 2025 out of concern for a weakening job market but have held off lowering rates further this year. The Fed meets next week to decide on rates.
The Labor Department reported earlier this month that U.S. employers added an unexpectedly strong 178,000 new jobs in March, nudging the unemployment rate back down to 4.3%. That followed a surprisingly large loss of 92,000 jobs in February. Revisions also have trimmed 69,000 jobs from December and January payrolls, a sign that the labor market remains under strain.
A number of high-profile companies have cut jobs recently, including Morgan Stanley,Block, UPSand Amazon.
Weekly jobless aid applications have stabilized in a range mostly between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. economy emerged from the pandemic recession. However, hiring began slowing about two years ago and tapered further in 2025 due to President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff rollouts, his purge of the federal workforce and the lingering effects of high interest rates meant to control inflation.
Employers added fewer than 200,000 jobs last year, compared with about 1.5 million in 2024, according to the data firm FactSet.
The American labor market appears stuck in what economists call a “low-hire, low-fire” state that has kept the unemployment rate historically low, but has left those out of work struggling to find a new job.
The Labor Department’s report Thursday showed that the four-week moving average of jobless claims, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, inched up by 750 to 210,750.
The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending April 11 rose by 12,000 to 1.82 million.
