With steady weekly jobless-claims readings, the U.S. labor market appeared to remain in a relatively stable groove as the Iran war added uncertainty for oil prices and the broader economy, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The agency said applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending April 11 fell to 207,000 from 218,000 the prior week. The Labor Department also reported that the four-week moving average of claims rose modestly, a smoothing metric used by economists to account for week-to-week volatility.
The Labor Department’s report also placed the latest claims number within the range of recent years, even as it fell short of the 217,000 figure that analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected. Filings for unemployment benefits are generally treated as a near real-time indicator of layoffs and job-market conditions, and they have been running mostly in a band between about 200,000 and 250,000 since the economy emerged from the pandemic recession, according to the report.
Alongside the initial claims data, the Labor Department said the four-week moving average increased by 500 to 209,750. It also said the total number of Americans continuing to file for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending April 4 rose by 31,000 to 1.82 million, aligning with analyst forecasts.
The latest labor-market update arrived as markets weighed the economic effects of the war in Iran, which the report said had injected a large degree of uncertainty. The article said Iran and the U.S. agreed to a ceasefire last week, while the war was in its seventh week at the time of the Labor Department’s release.
The report tied that uncertainty to energy prices and inflation pressures. It said oil prices settled around $92 per barrel after previously being about $112, but still remained above pre-war levels, and it said gas prices stayed elevated. The Labor Department reported Friday that consumer prices rose 3.3% in March from a year earlier—its largest yearly increase since May 2024—while rising 0.9% on a monthly basis, the biggest increase in nearly four years, according to the story.
The labor and inflation picture also intersects with the Federal Reserve’s rate outlook. The report said Fed officials voted to raise rates three times to close out 2025, then held off lowering them further this year, citing concerns about a weakening job market and keeping inflation in check.
Even as jobless claims remained contained, the report said the labor market has shown signs of strain beneath the surface. It referenced the Labor Department’s earlier employment report, which it said showed employers added 178,000 jobs in March and pushed the unemployment rate down to 4.3% after a loss of 92,000 jobs in February. It also noted revisions that trimmed 69,000 jobs from December and January payrolls.
The Labor Department’s claims release underscored a broader pattern described in the report: hiring had begun slowing about two years earlier and tapered further in 2025 due to policy changes and the effects of high interest rates, even as the unemployment rate stayed historically low. The article characterized the current labor-market dynamic as a “low-hire, low-fire” environment, where layoffs remain relatively steady but people out of work can still struggle to find new jobs.