A decrease in the number of people applying for unemployment benefits last week reflects a decrease in the number of layoffs across the economy.
Employment claims decreased by 18,000 to 215,000 for the week ending February 26, down from 233,000 the previous week, according to data released by the Labor Department on Thursday.
In order to account for week-to-week fluctuations, the four-week average of claims declined by 6,000 to 231,500.
In total, 1,476,000 Americans were receiving unemployment benefits during the week that ended on February 12, a slight increase of 2,000 from the previous week’s corrected figure, which was the lowest level since March 14, 1970, according to the Labor Department.
First-time applications for unemployment benefits often reflect the rate of layoffs, which have returned to levels that were relatively healthy prior to the epidemic.
On Friday, the Labor Department will release its monthly jobs report for February. Analysts polled by the financial data firm FactSet predicted that the United States economy added 400,000 jobs in the month of November.
The economy of the United States added 467,000 jobs in January and revised the gains from December and November upward by a total of 709,000 jobs in December and November. Currently, the unemployment rate remains at 4%, which is a historically low amount.
The economy of the United States has made a good recovery from the recession caused by the coronavirus in 2020. As a result of increased government expenditure and the introduction of the vaccine, employers created a record 6.4 million new employment in the United States in 2017.
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the United States economy grew at the strongest annual rate since a 7.2 percent increase in 1984, which also occurred following a recession, in 2021.
A 40-year high in inflation (7.5 percent year-on-year) has also been reached, prompting the Federal Reserve to loosen its monetary policy to aid the struggling economy. The Federal Reserve has announced that it will begin a series of interest-rate increases this month in a bid to cool rapidly rising prices.
