artificial intelligence<\/a> for some job roles, claims have remained below the 230,000 level this year. Economists speculate that laid-off technology workers are most likely receiving generous severance packages.<\/p>\nA report from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas on Thursday showed U.S.-based employers announced 83,387 job cuts in April, up 38% from March. The tally was, however, down 21% from last year.<\/p>\n
LAYOFFS TRENDING LOWER<\/p>\n
Employers have so far this \u200byear \u200bannounced 300,749 job cuts, down 50% from the same period in 2025. Technology companies have accounted for the \u200bbulk of the layoffs, with AI often cited as the reason.<\/p>\n
The U.S. \u200ccentral bank last week left its benchmark overnight interest rate in the 3.50%-3.75% range, citing inflation worries. Financial markets expect the Fed to keep rates steady into 2027.<\/p>\n
U.S. stocks were largely flat in early trading. The dollar slipped against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury yields fell.<\/p>\n
The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, decreased 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.766 million during the week ended April 25, the lowest level since January 2024, the claims report showed. The data have no bearing on the employment report for April, which is due to be released on Friday.<\/p>\n
Nonfarm payrolls likely increased by 62,000 jobs last month after rebounding by 178,000 in March, a Reuters survey of economists predicted. \u200cThe anticipated slowdown will reflect the fading boost from warmer weather and the return of striking health \u200bworkers.<\/p>\n
The expected pace of job growth would be above what economists say is now needed to keep up with \u200bgrowth in the working-age population. Estimates for the so-called break-even rate are between zero \u200band 50,000 jobs per month.<\/p>\n
The unemployment rate is forecast to have been unchanged at 4.3% in April, with a possibility of being rounded down to \u200c4.2%. The Chicago Fed is forecasting the jobless rate to be 4.23%, \u200bwhich would round down to 4.2%.<\/p>\n
A separate report \u200bfrom the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics showed nonfarm productivity, which measures hourly output per worker, increased at a 0.8% annualized rate in the first quarter after rising at a 1.6% rate in the October-December quarter. Worker productivity, however, increased at a 2.9% pace from a year ago. Heavy spending on AI has ignited a debate \u200bover its impact on productivity.<\/p>\n
“The question is whether productivity has accelerated \u200cbecause of AI and\/or other technological advances, which would be expected to continue, or because firms were simply holding off on hiring last year due to \u200bpolicy-related uncertainty and making do with lower headcounts, which also shows up as a productivity acceleration but is not sustainable long-term,” said Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. \u200beconomist at Santander U.S. Capital Markets.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Paul Simao)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Lucia Mutikani WASHINGTON, May 7 (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits rose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46,2071,51836,9316,35930,12522,29022,125,46792],"class_list":["post-654035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-federal-reserve","tag-initial-claims","tag-interest-rates","tag-jobless-claims","tag-labor-department","tag-labor-market","tag-unemployment","tag-unemployment-benefits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654035","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=654035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}