Jobless claims inch up to 214,000 as layoffs stay low but costs rise

Americans seeking unemployment benefits increased slightly last week but stayed within what economists have been calling a historically healthy range, according to a Labor Department report highlighted by the Associated Press. For the week ending April 18, jobless-aid filings rose by 6,000 to 214,000, after 208,000 the prior week. The Labor Department also reported that total filings for the previous week ending April 11 rose by 12,000 to 1.82 million.

The Labor Department’s weekly jobless claims are widely treated as a near real-time proxy for layoffs and for momentum in the job market. In this latest reading, the number came in slightly above what analysts surveyed by FactSet expected—210,000 new applications—according to the AP report.

The same report showed that the four-week moving average of initial jobless claims, a metric that smooths out weekly volatility, inched up by 750 to 210,750. This kind of stabilization has been associated with a labor market that is not sending a strong signal that layoffs are accelerating, even as hiring has slowed from earlier pandemic-recession recovery.

The AP story placed the claims data alongside other recent economic indicators, including a March inflation report that the Labor Department issued after what the AP described as the largest monthly jump in gas prices in six decades. In that report, consumer prices rose 3.3% in March from a year earlier, compared with 2.4% in February, and prices rose 0.9% month to month from February in March, the biggest such increase in nearly four years.

With inflation already above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, elevated gasoline prices reduce the odds of interest-rate cuts happening soon, the AP said. The Fed had cut rates three times to close 2025 out of concern for a weakening job market, but has held off on additional reductions this year, the AP added. The Fed is scheduled to meet next week to decide on rates.

The AP also connected the broader outlook to a heightened economic backdrop, saying the Iran war—then in its eighth week—has injected uncertainty about how it could affect U.S. and global economies. The report said U.S. financial markets rebounded to record levels and that prices for U.S. crude oil had settled around $94 per barrel after previously being about $112 earlier in the month, while gas prices remained elevated.

In the labor market itself, the AP noted that employers added an unexpectedly strong 178,000 new jobs in March, which nudged the unemployment rate back down to 4.3%. That improvement followed a surprisingly large loss of 92,000 jobs in February, and revisions earlier had trimmed 69,000 jobs from December and January payrolls, a sign the labor market remained under strain.

The AP said a number of high-profile companies had cut jobs recently, including Morgan Stanley, Block, UPS, and Amazon. It described the overall economy as stuck in what economists call a “low-hire, low-fire” environment—keeping the unemployment rate historically low while leaving many people out of work struggling to find a new job.

As the Fed prepares to convene next week, investors and analysts are watching for whether the labor-market signal from jobless claims stays stable, even as inflation pressures tied to energy costs and uncertainty from the Iran war continue to complicate expectations for policy changes.