WASHINGTON, Dec 24 (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new applications for jobless benefits unexpectedly fell last week, but the unemployment rate likely remained \u200bhigh in December amid sluggish hiring.<\/p>\n
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped \u200c10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 214,000 for the week ended December 20, the Labor Department said on \u200cWednesday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 224,000 claims for the latest week. The report was published a day early because of the Christmas Day holiday.<\/p>\n
Claims have been volatile in recent weeks amid challenges adjusting the data for seasonal fluctuations ahead of the \u2060holiday season. The labor market \u200cremains locked in what economists and policymakers describe as a “no hire, no fire” mode.<\/p>\n
Though the economy remains resilient, with gross domestic \u200dproduct increasing at its fastest pace in two years in the third quarter, the labor market has almost stalled. Labor demand and supply have been impacted by import tariffs and an \u200bimmigration crackdown, economists say.<\/p>\n
The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an initial \u200cweek of aid, a proxy for hiring, increased 38,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.923 million during the week ending December 13, the claims report showed.<\/p>\n
The so-called continuing claims covered the period during which the government surveyed households for December’s unemployment rate.<\/p>\n
The elevated continued claims aligned with a survey from the Conference Board on Tuesday showing consumers’ \u2060perceptions of the labor market deteriorated this month \u200bto levels last seen in early 2021. The \u200bunemployment rate increased to a four-year high of 4.6% in November, though part of the rise was because of technical factors related to \u200dthe 43-day government shutdown.<\/p>\n
The \u2060record-long shutdown prevented data collection for October’s unemployment rate. The Federal Reserve this month cut its benchmark overnight interest rate by another 25 basis points \u2060to the 3.50%-to-3.75% range, but signaled borrowing costs were unlikely to fall in the near term \u200cas policymakers await clarity on the direction of the labor market and \u200cinflation.<\/p>\n
(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani;Editing by Dan Burns)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, Dec 24 (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new applications for jobless benefits unexpectedly fell last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46,51836,46793,12522,29022,46792,2442],"class_list":["post-367725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-initial-claims","tag-jobless-benefits","tag-labor-department","tag-labor-market","tag-unemployment-benefits","tag-unemployment-rate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}