Washington – The number of Americans who request unemployment benefits fell last week despite the greatest uncertainty about how President Donald Trump’s rates It will impact US and global economies.
Applications for unemployment claim fell between 13,000 and 228,000 for the week that ended on May 3, the Labor Department said Thursday. That is in line with the prognosis of 229,000 new application analysts.
Weekly applications for unemployment benefits are considered an indicator of dismissals, and have mainly bounced in a healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 decimated the economy and eliminated millions of jobs.
Although Trump has arrested Or it backed away many of its tariff threats, concerns remain a global economic slowdown that could change the United States labor market, which has been a pillar of the US economy for years.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve maintained its reference loan rate at 4.3% for the third consecutive meeting, after cutting it three times in a row at the end of last year.
The president of the FED, Jerome Powell, said that the risks of greater unemployment and inflation have increased, an unusual combination that complicates the double mandate of the central bank to control prices and keep unemployment low.
Powell said tariffs have moistened consumer and business Feeling, but those data have not yet shown significant damage to the economy.
A contraction It has already begun in the United States., Where the economy was reduced at an annual rate of 0.3% from January to March as Trump’s commercial wars interrupted businesses. The growth of the first quarter was slowed down an increase in imports, since companies in the United States tried to bring foreign goods before Trump massive tariffs It entered into force.
It was the first quarterly decrease in GDP in three years.
Like his promise to institute tariffs, Trump’s promise to drastically reduce the federal government’s workforce has held much of the first weeks of his presidency and is still in motion.
It is not clear when the employment cuts ordered by the Government Efficiency Department, or “Dux”, headed by Elon Musk, will appear in the weekly layoff data. However, the reductions of federal government personnel They are already feelingeven outside the Washington area, DC.
Despite showing some signs of weakening during the past year, the labor market is still solid with abundant works and relatively few dismissals.
Last week, the government reported that US employers added a surprisingly strong 177,000 jobs In April. The unemployment rate maintained at 4.2%historically healthy, however, many economists anticipate that a negative impact of commercial wars will materialize this year for US workers.
Companies that have announced employment cuts this year include Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines and the Metrizo Meta Matrix.
The Labor Department reported that the average claims of four weeks, which equals some of the turns from week to week, increased by 1,000 to 227,000.
The total number of Americans who receive unemployment benefits for the week of April 26 fell to 1.88 million, a 29,000 decrease.
