Seasonally adjusted initial unemployment claims reached 215,000 for the week ending May 23, a gain of 5,000 from the prior week's revised figure of 210,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 211,000 claims, according to Reuters.
At 209,000, the four-week moving average — a gauge used to reduce the noise of single-week fluctuations — moved up from a revised 202,750. Continuing claims for the week ending May 16 came in at a seasonally adjusted 1.786 million, an increase of 15,000 from the preceding period. Both measures remain below levels from a year ago, when initial claims stood at 236,000 and continuing claims totaled 1.917 million.
"Initial claims are still impressively low, near historic lows," Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a commentary, according to ABC News. "The uptick from last week to this week is trivial in a labor market of 159 million workers."
Claims have held in a range of roughly 190,000 to 230,000 this year, according to Reuters. Broader layoffs have largely held in check even as the U.S.-Israel war with Iran has roiled markets — the conflict severed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, sending commodity prices and inflation higher — with the most visible job cuts concentrated among technology companies making room for artificial intelligence.
