Aug. 24 (UPI) — First-time claims of unemployment dropped by 10,000 last week, but the Labor Department on Thursday reported a slight increase in the number of people filing over continued weeks.
The Labor Department reported first-time filings totaled 230,000 during the week ending Aug. 19, a decline of 10,000 from the prior week. The less-volatile, four-week moving average showed an increase of 2,250 to reach 236,750.
Ed Moya, a senior market analyst at the New York brokerage OANDA, said it looks to him as if hiring is starting to wane.
“Filings for unemployment benefits came in less than expected, signaling that the labor market is slowly cooling,” he said.
Skewing the data somewhat were the 3,700 new claims from Hawaii, where rebuilding is ongoing in the aftermath of the blazes that torched much of Maui.
To Moya’s point, the total number of filings over continued weeks reached 1.8 million during the week ending Aug. 5, an increase of 4,659 from the previous week. That’s nearly 400,000 more than during the comparable week in 2022.
For all of July, meanwhile, an increase of 187,000 jobs was far less than the average monthly gain of 312,000 in the previous 12 months, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
Should the trend continue, it could add to a growing list of economic concerns that have emerged so far in August. The U.S. housing sector in particular is facing new doldrums as mortgage rates top 7% for a 30-year, fixed-term loan. Any further cooling could hit construction jobs.
With that, the market will be focused on rhetoric emerging from this week’s economic symposium at the Jackson Hole resort town in Wyoming, where Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is scheduled to speak Friday.
The Labor Department releases a more complete monthly picture for the job market next week.
