{"id":165583,"date":"2025-08-22T04:37:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T04:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/165583\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T04:37:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T04:37:11","slug":"rising-unemployment-claims-signal-a-softening-job-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/165583\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising unemployment claims signal a softening job market"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, a whole lot of eyes and ears will be watching and listening to what’s happening in a gorgeous place in the Wyoming mountains: Jackson Hole<\/a>, where economists and central bank leaders, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, will be meeting and talking.<\/p>\n

Their conversations are likely to touch on interest rates, of course, but the title of this year’s symposium is\u00a0\u201cLabor Markets in Transition: Demographics, Productivity, and Macroeconomic Policy.\u201d So they’ll be doing a lot of talking about the employment situation.<\/p>\n

First-time claims for unemployment benefits jumped by 11,000 last week<\/a>, more than expected, to hit 235,000, the most since mid-June.<\/p>\n

During the week prior, continuing claims \u2014 that\u2019s all the laid-off workers who have been collecting unemployment for two weeks or longer \u2014 came in just shy of 2 million.<\/p>\n

That’s the most since November, 2021.<\/p>\n

Unemployment claims give a snapshot of what\u2019s happening in the labor market \u2014 in near-real-time. First-time claims reported today were filed just last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When they\u2019re increasing, that says something.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re one of the key signs we have a weakening job market,\u201d said Andrew Stettner at The Century Foundation. \u201cMore people staying on unemployment benefits<\/a> than a year ago. Hiring really slowing down in all sectors except for health care.\u201d <\/p>\n

A lot of employers are still loathe to downsize \u2014 they remember the labor shortages of the pandemic. <\/p>\n

\u201cNew layoffs<\/a> have not been at a recessionary level,\u201d Stettner said. \u201cBut because people haven\u2019t been able to get off unemployment, you\u2019re seeing the total numbers really steadily increase.\u201d <\/p>\n

But the glass may still be half-full, said Amy Glaser at staffing firm Adecco.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to confuse weakness with moderation,\u201d said Glaser. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a bit of a pause, not a halt, in hiring.\u201d <\/p>\n

And we\u2019ve seen declines in both employers\u2019 demand for workers, and in the number of people looking for jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019ve got the aging (baby) boomers that are retiring every day,\u201d Glaser said. \u201cAnd then you also see the demand side of the house, where we\u2019ve got tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty.\u201d <\/p>\n

That points to a supply-demand imbalance. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe demand for labor is contracting at a faster pace than the supply of labor,\u201d said George Bory at asset management firm Allspring. \u201cAnd you may see unemployment now start to move higher.\u201d <\/p>\n

Workers on unemployment, plus new entrants to the labor force<\/a>, chase a shrinking number of jobs.\u00a0It\u2019s a labor market in transition, possibly something Fed Chair Powell will touch on when he speaks at Jackson Hole.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe data does show that the labor market is softening, and so from that perspective, there is an argument for the Fed to resume rate cuts,\u201d Bory said.<\/p>\n

However? There\u2019s a little thing called \u201cinflation.\u201d <\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday, a whole lot of eyes and ears will be watching and listening to what’s happening in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":165584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,95279,95280,420,49925,24674,95278,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-165583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-continuing-jobless-claims","10":"tag-first-time-unemployment-claims","11":"tag-jobs","12":"tag-unemployement","13":"tag-unemployment-benefits","14":"tag-unemployment-claims","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115070569393296385","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}