Claims for jobless benefits increased last week, though not enough to cause concern about the strength of the US labor market.
Claims increased by 21,000 to 248,000 in the week ending Aug. 5, compared with 227,000 the week before, the Labor Department reported Thursday. It was the biggest increase in five weeks.
The four-week moving average, a less volatile reading, rose by 2,750 to 228,250.
Claims for unemployment benefits are considered to be a broad representation of the number of layoffs in a week.
The number topped 260,000 for several weeks in April and May, causing some concern, but then it dropped.
Faced with troubled levels of inflation, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates at a breakneck pace over the past year and a half: the central bank has raised its benchmark rate 11 times to the current 5.4%, the highest in 22 years.
The Fed was looking to cool the labor market and lower wages, which theoretically suppress price increases. Although inflation decreased considerably during this period, the labor market remains remarkably strong.
Last week, the Labor Department reported that 187,000 jobs were created in July, a healthy number but lower than expected. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, the lowest in almost half a century.
Also, the government reported last week that job offers were below 9.6 million in June, the lowest figure in two years. But those numbers are still remarkably strong, considering that the job offer had never reached 8 million before 2021.
Aside from a series of mass layoffs in the tech sector earlier in the year, companies across the board have retained their workers.
