A hiring sign is displayed at a restaurant in Rolling Meadows, Ill., Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2022. On Thursday, the Labor Department reports on the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits last week. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
By Matt Ott
The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid was higher over the past few months than the government had initially reported, reflecting a modest rise in layoffs as the economy has slowed in the face of higher interest rates.
The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of applications has been above 200,000 since early February — above previous estimates, though still relatively low by historical standards.
The department has revised its estimates of the number of weekly applications for jobless benefits under a new formula it is using to reflect seasonal adjustments. The new formula is intended to more accurately capture seasonal patterns in job losses.
For the week that ended April 1, the number of Americans applying for jobless aid was 228,000, the government estimated. That was down from 246,000 in the previous week and 247,000 in the week before that. Using its new seasonal adjustment formula, the government revised up each of those figures by nearly 50,000.
Applications for unemployment benefits serve as a proxy for the number of job cuts because most people who are laid off file for jobless aid. About 1.82 million people were receiving jobless aid in the week that ended March 25, an increase of 6,000 from the week before.
Though the U.S. labor market remains healthy, layoffs have been mounting in the technology sector, where many companies hired aggressively during the pandemic. IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, Twitter and DoorDash have all announced layoffs in recent months. Amazon and Facebook have announced two sets of job cuts since the beginning of 2023.
“The trend in seasonally adjusted initial claims is noticeably higher than previously estimated, which does suggest that the flurry of layoff announcements so far this year has begun to show up in these data,” Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist of Santander U.S. Capital Markets, wrote in a research note.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
William Falcon, CEO and Founder of Lightning AI, discusses the ongoing feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and how everyday people can use AI in their lives.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed on Tuesday, adding that they will trigger toug
The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down the agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal. Russell Vought is the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought directed the CFPB in a Saturday night email to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama created it following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
