The numbers: The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits in mid-January fell to 187,000 and touched the lowest level in 16 months, but most of the decline was tied to a plunge in filings in New York state.
New U.S. jobless claims dropped by 16,000 from a revised 203,000 in the prior week, the government said Thursday.
The last time claims were that low was in September 2022.
Economists had forecast new claims in the week ending Jan. 13 to total 208,000, based on seasonally adjusted numbers.
The decline last week appears to have been exaggerated by a sharp drop claims in New York state, however, They fell by 17,176 to 20,8000. Similar drops in the past seem to be tied to school vacations.
New jobless claims also tend to jump up and down around the holiday shopping that stretches from Thanksgiving until Martin Luther King Jr. Day because of temporary hiring.
That’s why economists prefer to wait until February before trying to glean broader trends in the labor market.
Big picture: After a big surge in hiring over the past few years, businesses are pulling back.
Yet there’s enough demand for goods and services, even with the economy slowing, that most companies are avoiding layoffs.
A strong jobs market and low unemployment rate have been the economy’s strongest bulwark against recession in a period of rising interest rates.
Key details: New jobless claims only fell in 22 of the 53 states and territories that report these figures to the federal government.
New claims rose in 31 other states, but the increases were small.
The number of people collecting unemployment benefits in the U.S., meanwhile, slid by 26,000 to 1.81 million.
Still, a gradual rise in these so-called continuing claims over the past year is a sign it’s taking longer for people to find new jobs.
Looking at actual or unadjusted figures, initial jobless claims totaled 289,228 last week, compared to 288,330 in the same week a year earlier. That also shows that the rate of layoffs remains low.
Market reaction: The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
and S&P 500
SPX,
were set to open mixed in Thursday trading.