The number of Americans who filed new unemployment benefit applications rose last week to its highest level in 10 months, pointing to an easing of labor market conditions.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose by 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 242,000 in the week ended June 8, the highest level since August, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The economists consulted by Reuters They had anticipated 225,000 applications in the last week.
The labor market is cooling as the cumulative and lagged effects of the Federal Reserve’s 525 basis point interest rate hikes starting in 2022 ripple widely through the economy.
The unemployment rate rose to a still relatively low 4% in May for the first time since January 2022, while economic growth slowed considerably in the first quarter.
The US central bank on Wednesday kept its overnight benchmark rate at the current range of 5.25%-5.5%, where it has been since July.
The Fed authorities They postponed the start of rate cuts until December and foresee a single reduction of a quarter of a percentage point for this year.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters that “a broad set of indicators suggests that conditions in the labor market have returned more or less to where they were on the eve of the pandemic, relatively tight but not overheated.”
The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, rose by 30,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.82 billion during the week ending June 1, the report showed.
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