US jobless-claims numbers fell again as applications for unemployment benefits dropped to 206,000 for the week ending Feb. 14, the U.S. Labor Department reported this week. The reading, which is widely used as a near-real-time proxy for layoffs, adds to a picture in which job cuts have remained subdued despite some recent high-profile corporate announcements. The Labor Department also reported the level of continuing claims—people already drawing benefits—rose in the prior week.
The Labor Department said the week’s applications fell by 23,000 from the previous week, according to the report released Thursday. The Associated Press reported that this was well below what analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet forecast: 225,000 new applications.
In addition to the headline number, the Labor Department reported that the four-week moving average of jobless claims—intended to smooth out week-to-week swings—decreased by 1,000 to 219,000. That average is commonly watched alongside the weekly figure when assessing labor-market momentum.
The Labor Department also said the total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the week ending Feb. 7 increased to 1.87 million, up 17,000 from the prior week. Together, the weekly and continuing-claims totals help frame how many workers are newly entering the unemployment system and how many remain in it.
The broader context described by the Associated Press is that layoffs have stayed in a historically low range for several years, with weekly claims often clustering between 200,000 and 250,000. Even so, recent weeks have brought job-cut announcements from companies including UPS, Amazon, and Dow, as well as the Washington Post, underscoring that employers can still reduce headcount even when layoffs as a whole remain limited.
The Associated Press reported that Americans have grown more pessimistic about the economy amid a combination of layoff announcements and what it described as sluggish labor-market reports from the government. The report also said job openings in December fell to the lowest level in more than five years, pointing to softness on the hiring side even as other data have remained relatively steady.
The labor-market backdrop the Associated Press described includes government revisions that cut the number of jobs created over 2024–2025 by hundreds of thousands. The article said those revisions reduced jobs created in the prior year to just 181,000, about one-third of the previously reported 584,000, and described it as the weakest since the pandemic year of 2020.
The Associated Press also pointed to stronger-than-expected job growth earlier this month—when the Labor Department reported employers added 130,000 jobs in January and the unemployment rate fell to 4.3% from 4.4%—while noting economists are divided about whether that strength will persist. Some economists have suggested borrowing costs are discouraging companies from expanding, and the article said some Federal Reserve officials argued that weak hiring last year showed that effect. A sustained pickup in hiring, the Associated Press reported, could challenge that interpretation.