?States reported that 225,000 workers filed for new unemployment benefits during the week ending Nov. 5, an increase of 7,000 from the previous week’s revised level and just over the prepandemic average of 218,000.
The number of workers continuing to claim unemployment benefits—1.5 million—is still well below the prepandemic average of 1.7 million. The consistently low number of jobless claims for a year now come amid efforts by the Federal Reserve to cool the economy and bring down inflation, which is running near its highest levels since the early 1980s.
Though there has been an increase in layoffs in certain sectors of the economy like technology and real estate, employers have generally been hanging onto workers as labor remains scarce, especially in the service industries. Job openings unexpectedly rose in September, and payrolls increased by 261,000 jobs in October, while the unemployment rate increased marginally to 3.7 percent, just over a half-century low.