Jobless Claims Inch Up, but Layoffs Remain Historically Low - Labor Market Resilience Amidst Rising Interest Rates

In the past week, a bit more people asked for help with job-related issues, but the number of actual job losses is still quite low. This shows that the job market is doing pretty well, even with the government raising interest rates.

Around 207,000 people asked for help with job-related problems in the week ending on September 30. This number went up by about 2,000 from the previous week.

We also look at a longer-term average, which is a steadier way to understand things. In this case, that number dropped by 2,500, and it's now at 208,750.

The government has been making some changes to how they handle money to try to keep the economy stable. They've been doing this for over a year now. They've made the cost of borrowing money higher 11 times since March of 2022. They're doing this partly to try to slow down hiring and to stop people's wages from going up too quickly. But even with these changes, the job market is doing better than we expected.

Earlier this week, the government told us that there are more jobs available than we thought. In August, American employers said they had about 9.6 million jobs open. That's up from 8.9 million in July. This is the first time we've seen an increase in three months.

In August, American employers hired 187,000 people. That's a pretty good number. But the unemployment rate, which tells us how many people are looking for jobs but can't find them, went up a little to 3.8%. This is still low compared to what we've seen in the past. We'll get more information about jobs in September this Friday.

Throughout this year, American businesses have been adding about 236,000 new jobs every month. This is a bit less than in the past two years, but it's still a good number.

Except for some layoffs early this year, mostly in the technology sector, companies have been working hard to keep their workers.

In total, about 1.67 million people were getting help with job-related problems in the week ending on September 23. This was about 5,000 fewer than the week before. This shows us that even though some people need help with their jobs, the overall job market is still pretty strong.

Also Read: Surge in US Job Openings Signals Potential Interest Rate Hike