{"id":167574,"date":"2025-09-19T12:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T12:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/167574\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T12:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T12:22:11","slug":"initial-unemployment-claims-drop-reversing-last-weeks-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/167574\/","title":{"rendered":"Initial Unemployment Claims Drop, Reversing Last Week\u2019s Increase"},"content":{"rendered":"

The number of Americans filing for unemployment dropped by 33,000 last week, reversing the previous week\u2019s increase that had taken the number to its highest level in almost four years.<\/p>\n

There were 231,000 initial claims during the week ended Friday (Sept. 13), down from the previous week\u2019s revised level of 264,000, the Department of Labor<\/a> said in a Thursday (Sept. 18) press release<\/a>. The previous week\u2019s level was revised up by 1,000.<\/p>\n

The DOL reported Sept. 11 that during the week ended Sept. 6, the number of initial claims<\/a> rose by 27,000 to reach the highest number since the 268,000 recorded on Oct. 23, 2021.<\/p>\n

During the week ended Friday, the four-week moving average of 240,000 was 750 lower than the previous week\u2019s revised average of 240,750, according to the Thursday press release. The previous week\u2019s average was revised up by 250.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg reported<\/a> Thursday that the drop in initial claims was the largest in almost four years and that the total number of initial claims was consistent with the levels seen throughout 2025.<\/p>\n

The report added that the previous week\u2019s increase occurred during a week that included a holiday, Labor Day, which traditionally makes the data more volatile, and that much of the increase occurred in Texas, where a state official attributed the increase to a rise in attempted fraud.<\/p>\n

Advertisement: Scroll to Continue<\/p>\n

Reuters reported<\/a> Thursday that the latest week\u2019s data on initial claims marks the continuation of a trend that is steady and remains too low to signal a recession.<\/p>\n

The report also noted that the prior week\u2019s unusually high increase in initial claims was concentrated in Texas and that the state\u2019s Workforce Commission<\/a> reported that after the Labor Day holiday, it \u201cobserved an uptick in identity fraud claim attempts aimed at exploiting the unemployment insurance system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The DOL also reported Thursday that during the week ended Sept. 6, the insured unemployment rate was 1.3%, unchanged from the previous week.<\/p>\n

The insured unemployment number for that week was 1,920,000, which was 7,000 lower than the previous week\u2019s revised level of 1,927,000. The previous week\u2019s number was revised down by 12,000.<\/p>\n

The four-week moving average of 1,932,500 was 10,250 lower than the previous week\u2019s revised average of 1,942,750. The previous week\u2019s average was revised down by 3,000.<\/p>\n

In comments submitted to the DOL and included in the Thursday press release, the state with the greatest decrease in the number of initial claims filed during the week ended Sept. 6, New York, with 3,623 fewer claims, attributed the change to fewer layoffs in three industries: transportation and warehousing; healthcare and social assistance; and accommodation and food services.<\/p>\n

Tennessee, California and Illinois were the other states that had decreases of greater than 1,000 during that week. They did not submit comments to the DOL, according to the release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of Americans filing for unemployment dropped by 33,000 last week, reversing the previous week\u2019s increase that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101,6884,134,3,3300,145,3301],"class_list":["post-167574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-fraud","tag-jobs","tag-news","tag-pymnts-news","tag-unemployment","tag-whats-hot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}