By MATT OTT AP Business Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. applications for unemployment benefits fell last week as layoffs remain sparse despite a softening labor market and rising energy costs due to the Iran war.
The number of Americans applying for jobless aid for the week ending March 28 fell by 9,000 to 202,000 from the previous week’s 211,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s fewer than the 212,000 new filings analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet were expecting and within the range of the past several years.
Filings for unemployment benefits are considered representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.
A number of high-profile companies have cut jobs recently, including the software maker Oracle, which according to media reports cut thousands of workers this week.
Others that have recently announced job cuts include Morgan Stanley,Block, UPS and Amazon.
Weekly jobless aid applications have stabilized in a range mostly between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. economy emerged from the pandemic recession. However, hiring began slowing about two years ago and tapered even further in 2025 due to President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff rollouts, his purge of the federal workforce and the lingering effects of high interest rates meant to control inflation.
Employers added fewer than 200,000 jobs last year, compared with about 1.5 million in 2024, according to the data firm FactSet.
Last month, the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers unexpectedly cut 92,000 jobs in February, a sign that the labor market remains under strain. Revisions also slashed 69,000 jobs from December and January payrolls, nudging the unemployment rate up to 4.4%.
The March jobs report is due out Friday.
The surprisingly weak employment picture in February adds to the economic uncertainty over the war with Iran, which has caused oil prices to surge more than 40% and saddled business and consumers with higher costs.
This comes at a time when inflation was already relatively high in the U.S.
The Commerce Department recently reported that the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge rose 2.8% in January compared with a year earlier. That’s above the Fed’s 2% target and the latest sign that prices were persistently elevated even before the Iran war caused spikes in oil and gas costs.
That persistent inflation, combined with the uncertainties brought on by the conflict in the Middle East, led the Fed to leave its benchmark lending rate alone at its last meeting and raised doubts that a cut was coming anytime soon.
Central bank officials voted to raise the rate three times to close 2025 out of concern for a weakening job market.
The American labor market appears stuck in what economists call a “low-hire, low-fire” state that has kept the unemployment rate historically low, but has left those out of work struggling to find a new job.
The Labor Department’s report Thursday showed that the four-week moving average of jobless claims, which evens out some of the weekly swings, declined by 3,000 to 207,750.
The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending March 21 jumped by 25,000 to 1.84 million, the government said.