Roughly 238,000 first-time claims for unemployment benefits were filed last week, an increase of 4,000 from the previous week, according to Labor Department data released Wednesday. The latest spike pushed the four-week average of initial claims to its highest level since August 2023.
Americans are also remaining jobless for longer: Continuing claims, which are filed by people who have received benefits for at least a week or more, rose to their highest level since November 2021.
Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust, told CNN he's closely watching one underlying data point in the monthly jobs report: Jobless Individuals Due to Unemployment.
“On average, over three months, the number was up by about 200,000 people compared to last year,” Tilley said. “And that metric of permanent job losses, year over year, is almost never positive in an expansion. It was never positive between 2010 and 2019; it was not positive between the tech crash recession of 2001 and then 2008.”
He added: “So when you peel back the shell of what looks like very strong job growth on a raw count and look at it a little bit more closely … that paints a picture of a labor market that has normalized and is at risk of slipping.”
Still, other measures of layoff activity have not shown a worrying increase.
U.S.-based employers announced fewer job cuts last month than in May, but those layoff reports are still trending higher than last year, according to data released Wednesday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
The job placement and employment research firm counted 48,786 announced layoffs in June, down nearly 24% from the 63,618 announced layoffs in May but up 19.8% from the 40,709 announced layoffs in June of last year.
