The U.S. labor market appears to be holding steady as the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits dipped slightly last week.
According to the Associated Press, the Department of Labor said Thursday unemployment benefit claims fell between 2,000 and 220,000, which is approximately 226,000 less applications than analysts had previously forecast.
Analysts, however, are expecting the recent federal worker cuts by the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to begin to show in the data in the coming weeks.
President Donald Trump and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have been putting in efforts to strip back the federal workforce since Trump took office, with U.S. officials kicking off the dramatic downsizing via memo weeks ago.
While it was initially probationary employees who were terminated, the AP reported that the Trump administration is now focusing on career officials who have civil service protections.
Despite this, reports show that the labor market has had less layoffs overall, while the unemployment rate currently sits at 4.1%.
Employment opportunities are still high, with the department reporting that U.S. employers have added 151,000 jobs in February, particularly in jobs in healthcare, finance, transportation, and warehousing.
However, some high-profile companies have announced job cuts in 2025, including Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, and Meta.
The AP further reported that weekly unemployment benefit applications have generally sat between 200,000 and 250,000 each week for a number of years now and those numbers are used a strong indicator of layoffs.
While the four-week average increased by 1,500 to 226,000, the total number of Americans actually receiving unemployment benefits at the beginning of March fell by 27,000 to a total of 1.87 million.
According to CNN, some federal workers have been struggling to secure unemployment benefits, with a recently fired Department of Veteran Affairs worker, Corinne Bazarnyj, who is a disabled veteran, telling the outlet that because she was terminated on the grounds of her performance, applying for unemployment will likely be more difficult.
“I was terminated based on performance … So, I honestly don’t know if I’m going to get unemployment or not,” Bazarnyj told CNN.
