(VitalNews.org) – Americans filing for unemployment benefits has fallen to a two month low, signaling that layoffs remain low despite other signs of the labor market cooling.
Jobless claims fell by five thousand and now sit at two hundred and twenty seven thousand. It is also lower than two hundred and thirty thousand, which is what the analysts were expecting.
During the beginning of this year, claims were historically low at just over two hundred and thirteen thousand a week, but in May they started to go up again. They hit two hundred and fifty thousand in July, but the trend seems to be slipping back downward.
Employers added over one hundred and fourteen thousand jobs in July, much less than the monthly average of over two hundred thousand jobs. The total number of Americans collecting jobless benefits has declined by over twenty thousand people.
Economists polled by FactSet stated that the U.S. added one hundred and sixty thousand jobs and the unemployment rate went down a point of a percent. He revised totals, and evidence of the trends throughout the last months shows that the job market is slowing, and it supports the Fed’s actions to cut interest rates this month.
The Fed raised its benchmark interest rate eleven times between 2022 and 2023 in an attempt to calm the high inflation. The Feds have a goal of inflation hitting two percent, which Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said is approaching, and they will cut interest rates.
Some experts think that they may cut the rate by a full percent which is up from their transitional quarter of a percentage point that they usually cut.
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