- The number of Americans filing for unemployment claims fell by 4,000 for the week ended June 13.
- The unemployment rate has been at 4.3% for the past three months.
- The US Federal Reserve, in a statement on Wednesday, pointed out that the job gains have kept pace with the workforce.
The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits fell for the week ended June 13 as layoffs remained low and the market showed resilience.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell by 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 226,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday.
The records were in line with the 225,000 new applications predicted by analysts that data firm FactSet surveyed.
Weekly filings for unemployment benefits are seen as representative of US layoffs and a real-time indicator of how the job market is functioning.
In recent weeks, unemployment claims have shifted to the upper end of the 190,000-230,000 range for this year. However, the labour market has regained momentum, as per Reuters, with three straight consecutive months of strong job gains.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was unchanged at 1.2% for the week ending June 6.
The four-week moving average rose by 4,000 to 223,250. The previous week's average was revised from 219,000 to 219,250.
Lower layoffs mean that the unemployment rate has been steady at 4.3% for the past three months.
Claims usually increase at the beginning of summer as some states let non-teaching staff file for unemployment benefits during the school holidays.
The model used by the government to exclude seasonal fluctuations from the unemployment data does not always capture these shifts.
Continuing claims, which scale with the total size of the unemployed population, equalled 1.81 million in the week through June 6, compared to a revised 1.79 million a week earlier. The data on continuing claims falls behind the initial-claims data by a week, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The US Federal Reserve, in its statement on Wednesday, noted that the job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little.
While the central bank maintained its benchmark overnight interest rate in the range of 3.50%-3.75%, updated quarterly projections showed policymakers may raise borrowing costs later this year as inflation concerns grow.
Policy uncertainty and the war between the US and Iran conflict have constrained hiring, economists told Reuters. The number of individuals getting unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid rose by 24,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.81 million for the week ended June 6.
The jump in the so-called continuing claims falls in line with data highlighting that many unemployed people are experiencing long bouts of joblessness.
