Job Market
New claims for U.S. unemployment insurance totaled a seasonally adjusted 197,000 in the week ended September 19, down 1,000 from the previous week’s revised level, the Labor Department reported September 24. The previous week was revised up by 2,000, from 196,000 to 198,000. The four-week moving average, which smooths some weekly noise, fell 1,750 to 202,250. These are counts of new applications for unemployment benefits, not a count of people hired or of everyone who lost a job.
Low, and lower than a year ago
By historical standards the level is low. A year earlier, in the comparable week of 2025, seasonally adjusted initial claims were 219,000 and the four-week average was 236,750. Before seasonal adjustment, states recorded 163,811 initial claims, an increase of 10,243 from the prior week that was close to the roughly 10,475 increase the seasonal factors expected.
Continuing claims tell a similar story. Insured unemployment for the week ended September 12 was 1,719,000, up 2,000, and the insured unemployment rate held at 1.1%. Those figures cover only people who applied and qualified for state benefits; many unemployed workers never file, or are not eligible.
Few layoffs, but also few hires
The more important contrast is with hiring. The July Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey counted 5.1 million hires, a 3.2% hires rate, alongside 7.3 million openings. Layoffs and discharges were 1.7 million, a 1.0% rate, and quits 3.1 million, a 1.9% rate. That combination describes a market in which relatively few workers are being let go, but relatively few are moving into new jobs either.
Initial claims mainly capture the first of those flows. A market can have subdued layoffs while still offering jobseekers limited opportunities to switch or re-enter work. Reading only the claims release would hide that distinction, and a one-week move of 1,000 is well within the range that later revisions can erase.
For employers, lower claims are a sign that broad workforce reductions are not accelerating. For applicants, fewer new claims should not be read as more available offers. Neither series says whether a specific occupation or metro area is improving.
What comes next
The August JOLTS release is scheduled for Tuesday, September 29, and the September employment report for Friday, October 2. Both will add information about hiring and payrolls that a weekly benefits count cannot supply. Until then, this week’s number is a precise but narrow signal: new insured unemployment claims remain low and edged down.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Labor, “Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims,” September 24, 2026. https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf
- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), Initial Claims (ICSA). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Job Openings and Labor Turnover — July 2026,” September 1, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm
Featured photo: Officials open a WorkSource job center and online jobs portal at the Los Angeles Central Library in 2015. Representative image of public employment services; it is not connected to the claims data. Photo: Eric Garcetti (City of Los Angeles), via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0). Cropped from the original.
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