MIAMI– The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits in the United States fell slightly last week and was at its lowest level in about three months, while the labor market remains stable.
Claims decreased to 202,000 for the week ending Jan. 6, a very slight decrease of 1,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
The four-week average, which removes some of the week-to-week volatility, fell by 250 to 207,750.
The labor market has remained stable, with unemployment below 4%, thanks to the more than 10 million jobs available in the last three years, of which more than six million were created under the government of President Donald Trump.
Now the figure is below 9 million, but for two years it was at the top and reached 11.9 million vacancies due to the excessive federal aid from the Biden administration that discouraged the search and maintenance of jobs. less paid jobs.
Weekly unemployment aid claims are partly a reflection of the layoffs. Traditionally, layoffs do not occur in the first month of the year, with the exception of 2023 by large technology companies that continued the wave of massive layoffs since the end of 2022.
Claims for unemployment benefits have remained at unusually low levels for nearly two years, despite rising interest rates and high inflation.
To face late the highest inflation in almost five decades created by Joe Biden’s government with its climate change policies and its war on American oil companies, the Federal Reserve has increased its interest rates 11 times since March 2022.
Consumers suffer exorbitant prices
While inflation has decreased since last year, according to the Biden administration; The Labor Department reported that overall prices rose 0.3% from November and 3.4% from 12 months earlier, a sign that the Fed’s attempt to reduce inflation to its 2% target It will continue to be a bumpy and delayed road.
The Fed has not changed rates in its last three meetings and has given indications that it could begin to reduce them in 2024, but it is still too early to predict what will happen inside and outside the United States in a presidential election year.
For more than a year, liberal-leaning analysts and the mainstream left-wing press in the US have been publicly putting pressure in their reports to motivate the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. But the Central Bank is very clear that the inflation in the government figures does not coincide with the reality that American consumers have faced for three years.
The very high prices not only remain, but have continued to increase. Only gasoline and the value of vehicles have fallen, first due to the record US oil production of more than 13 million barrels of crude oil per day since mid-2022 and more stability in the chip supply chain, parts for manufacturing of automobiles, despite an employee strike for almost two months at the three main American manufacturers: Ford, General Motors and Stellanti.
More than 8 million jobs available in the US
The Fed began to increase rates in 2022, after a year with a completely passive attitude towards inflation levels in 2021, which reached 9.1% in the middle of the following year. Most Americans have suffered from historic inflation for three years.
Americans do not see inflation decreasing anywhere, except in the prices of gasoline and vehicle purchases, but that of other products such as food, insurance and housing have continued to rise month after month.
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Source: With information from AP and AFP
