WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits increased slightly last week, pointing to continued labor market stability in \u200cApril, though economic uncertainty and higher prices stemming from the war with \u200cIran pose downside risks.<\/p>\n
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 214,000 for \u200bthe week ended April 18, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 210,000 claims for the latest week.<\/p>\n
There are no signs yet of widespread layoffs from the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, which has disrupted shipping in the Strait \u200cof Hormuz and boosted the \u2060price of oil and other commodities, including fertilizers, petrochemicals and aluminum.<\/p>\n
Tehran effectively closed the strait after the conflict started on February 28. Economists \u2060worry a prolonged conflict could undermine an already fragile labor market.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump’s sweeping import tariffs and immigration crackdown were blamed for the labor market’s stumbles last year. Trump \u200bon Tuesday \u200bindefinitely extended the ceasefire with Iran, though \u200ba U.S. Navy blockade of Iranian \u200cports remained in effect.<\/p>\n
The claims data covered the period during which the government surveyed businesses for the nonfarm payrolls component of April’s employment report. Payrolls increased by 178,000 jobs in March after declining by 133,000 in February. Payrolls have dropped in six of the last 15 months.<\/p>\n
The labor market has remained anchored by low layoffs, even \u200cas employers show little appetite for expanding \u200bheadcount.<\/p>\n
The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an \u200binitial week of aid, a \u200bproxy for hiring, increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.821 million \u200cduring the week ended April 11, the \u200bclaims report showed.<\/p>\n
While \u200bthe so-called continuing claims have retreated from last year’s highs, that could partly be due to workers exhausting benefits, which are capped at 26 weeks in \u200bmost states. The data \u200calso excludes some unemployed young people with little or no work history, \u200ba group that is facing a difficult job market.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; \u200bEditing by Chizu Nomiyama and Paul Simao)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits increased slightly last week,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,304114,2960,164,64445,13308,21718,2425,64373],"class_list":{"0":"post-627433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-claims-data","12":"tag-economic-uncertainty","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-initial-claims","15":"tag-labor-department","16":"tag-labor-market","17":"tag-president-donald-trump","18":"tag-unemployment-benefits"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}