WASHINGTON — The number of Americans seeking jobless benefits rose modestly last week, suggesting that employers are still retaining workers even as the economy has showed signs of slowing.
Applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending Aug. 30 rose by 8,000 to 237,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s more than the 231,000 new applications economists were expecting.
Weekly applications for jobless benefits are seen as a proxy for layoffs and have mostly settled in a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic nearly four years ago.
While layoffs are low, hiring has also weakened as part of what many economists describe as a “no hire, no fire” economy. Still, the unemployment rate remains a historically low 4.2%.
On Wednesday, the government reported that U.S. employers were advertising 7.2 million job openings at the end of July, fewer than economists had forecast and the latest sign of weakness in the U.S. labor market.
Last month’s grim July jobs report, which showed job gains of just 73,000 and included massive downward revisions for June and May, sent financial markets spiraling.
President Donald Trump fired the head of the agency that compiles the monthly data.
The government issues its August jobs report on Friday, with economists expecting that U.S. employers added a slim 80,000 private non-farm jobs.
New jobs numbers are being closely watched on Wall Street and by the Federal Reserve as the most recent government data suggests hiring has slowed sharply since this spring. Job gains have averaged just 35,000 a month in the three months ending in July, barely one-quarter what they were a year ago.
Growth has weakened so far this year as many companies have pulled back on expansion projects amid the uncertainty surrounding the impacts of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies. Growth slowed to a 1.3% annual rate in the first half of the year, down from 2.5% in 2024.
The sluggishness in the job market is a key reason that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled last week that the central bank may cut its key interest rate at its next meeting Sept. 16-17. A cut could reduce other borrowing costs in the economy, including mortgages, auto loans, and business loans.
The Labor Department’s report Thursday showed that the four-week average of claims, which softens some of the week-to-week volatility, rose by 2,500 to 231,000.
The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the previous week of Aug. 23 fell by 4,000 to 1.94 million.
