US applications for jobless aid fall to 206,000 last week as layoffs
remain low
[February 20, 2026] By
MATT OTT
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. applications for unemployment benefits fell last
week as layoffs remain at historically low levels.
The number of Americans filing for jobless aid for the week ending Feb.
14 fell by 23,000 to 206,000 from the previous week, the Labor
Department reported Thursday. That’s significantly fewer than the
225,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet
had forecast.
Filings for unemployment benefits are viewed as representative of U.S.
layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job
market.
Earlier this month, the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers
added a surprisingly strong 130,000 jobs in January and the unemployment
rate fell to 4.3% from 4.4%. However, government revisions cut 2024-2025
U.S. payrolls by hundreds of thousands, reducing the number of jobs
created last year to just 181,000. That’s about one-third of the
previously reported 584,000 and the weakest since the pandemic year of
2020.
While weekly layoffs have remained in a historically low range mostly
between 200,000 and 250,000 for the past few years, a number of
high-profile companies have announced job cuts recently, including UPS,
Amazon, Dow and the Washington Post in recent weeks.
Mounting layoff announcements in the past year, combined with the
government’s own sluggish labor market reports, have left Americans
increasingly pessimistic about the economy, even though it is
registering solid growth.
The Labor Department also recently reported that job openings fell in
December to the lowest level in more than five years.
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 Data over the past year has broadly
revealed a labor market in which hiring has clearly slowed, hobbled
by uncertainty stoked by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the
lingering effects of the high interest rates the Fed engineered in
2022 and 2023 to tamp down a spike of pandemic-induced inflation.
Economists are conflicted about whether the stronger-than-expected
January job gains are a one-off or possibly the first sign of a
recovering labor market, which could lead the Fed to further delay
more cuts to its key interest rate.
Some Fed officials have specifically argued that last year’s weak
hiring shows that borrowing costs are weighing on growth and
discouraging companies from expanding. A sustained pickup in hiring
could undercut that theory.
The Labor Department's report Thursday showed that the four-week
moving average of jobless claims, which tempers some of the
week-to-week volatility, decreased by 1,000 to 219,000.
The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the
previous week ending Feb. 7 increased to 1.87 million, up 17,000
from the previous week, the government said.
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