The appetite of employers for workers remains unabated, the weekly report on jobless claims indicated on Thursday.
The number of people applying for unemployment benefits fell to 210,000 last week, slightly less than the 212,000 in the prior week. By historical standards, this is a very low level of claims.
New jobless claims have ranged from 194,000 to 225,000 since the start of the year. This suggests that the monetary policy described by the Federal Reserve as restrictive is not weighing down the labor market.
Economists had forecast a slight uptick in claims to 213,000.
The number of people collecting unemployment benefits beyond the initial week crept up by 4,000 to 1.81 million, also a low figure by historical standards.
Economists and Fed officials were taken by surprise that inflation fell so rapidly last year without a significant softening of the labor market. Layoffs have been rare, payroll growth robust, and the unemployment rate has remained below four percent.
Progress on bringing down inflation, however, has stalled in recent months. Some analysts think that while repairs to supply chains and productivity increases may have allowed inflation to fall last year without damage to the labor market, bringing inflation all the way down to the Fed’s two percent target and keeping it there may require higher levels of unemployment.
The unemployment rate rose to 3.9 percent in February, a half point above the recent trough of 3.4 percent hit in April and January of last year. That was the lowest level since 1969 and slightly below the pre-pandemic low of 3.5 percent hit in 2019 and early 2020.
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