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Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy
for layoffs, and have remained mostly in a range between 200,000
and 250,000 for the past few years.
The four-week average, which evens out some of the week-to-week
swings, inched up by 750 to 227,000.
It’s not clear when job cuts ordered by the Department of
Government Efficiency, or “DOGE,” will show up in the weekly
layoffs report, though the Labor Department’s February jobs
report showed that the federal government shed 10,000 jobs.
That’s the most since June of 2022.
Economists don’t expect the federal workforce layoffs to have
much of an impact until the March jobs report.
Those layoffs are part of the Trump administration’s efforts to
shrink the size of the federal workforce through DOGE,
spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk.
Senior U.S. officials set the government downsizing in motion
late last month via a memo dramatically expanding President
Donald Trump’s efforts to scale back the workforce. Thousands of
probationary employees have already been fired — though two
federal judges last week issued orders requiring the rehiring of
thousands of those workers.
Despite showing some signs of weakening during the past year,
the labor market remains healthy with plentiful jobs and
relatively few layoffs.
The Labor Department reported that U.S. employers added a solid
151,000 jobs last month, and while the unemployment rate ticked
up to a 4.1%, it remains a historically healthy figure.
Some high-profile companies have announced job cuts already this
year, including Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines
and Facebook parent company Meta.
The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits
for the week of March 8 rose by 33,000 to 1.89 million.
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