Recurring applications for U.S. unemployment benefits rose to the highest since November 2021, adding to signs it’s proving more difficult for out-of-work people to reenter the workforce.
Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, increased to 1.9 million in the week ended March 22, slightly higher than economists expected. Those applications have been hovering just under that level for several months now. Meanwhile, initial claims dipped last week, to 219,000, according to Labor Department data released Thursday.
The rise in recurring claims alongside a relatively subdued level of new claims is consistent with a job market that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell described last month as “a low firing and low hiring situation.”
The increase in continuing claims “provides further evidence that businesses are slowing hiring sharply amid heightened economic policy uncertainty,” Samuel Tombs, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in a note. “The risk ahead is that this gradual upward trend in unemployment gathers momentum, as the pace of layoffs also begins to increase, boosting the flow of initial claims.”
