Unemployment claims rise to highest level in 8 months, signaling slowdown
New applications for jobless benefits in the week ending May 31 reached 247,000, up 8,000 from the week prior, data from the Labor Department shows. The figure exceeded economists' predictions of 235,000 claims, according to financial data firm FactSet.
Overall filings for unemployment claims remain at historic lows. The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of May 24 was 1.9 million, down 3,000 from the week prior.
Still, the uptick in initial jobless claims last week is "hard to dismiss," Oliver Allen, senior U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said, as the climb could point to broader shifts in the workforce ahead of the May jobs report, to be released tomorrow.
"Moreover, a relatively weak hiring rate means that the share of newly unemployed workers who are struggling to find a new job quickly is slowly creeping up, too," he said in an email note. "The further downward pressure on hiring from tariff-related uncertainty will add to these growing strains on the jobs market."
Jobless claims have mostly floated between 200,000 to 250,000 since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 upended the labor market.
"Jobless claims continue to rise, but they are rising at a slow pace, so it's a trend worth watching, but too soon to sound the alarm," said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for Northlight Asset Management.
Firings overseen by the Trump Administration's Department of Government Efficiency, commonly known as DOGE, are the leading cause of job cuts in 2025, with over 280,000 federal workers abruptly terminated from jobs so far this year, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Other signs of potential slowdown
A national employment report released yesterday by ADP, a payroll and human resources software provider, found that the U.S. economy added 37,000 jobs in May, the lowest pace of hiring since May 2023.
"After a strong start to the year, hiring is losing momentum," said Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, in a statement Wednesday.
Another sign of a cooling labor market: The number of Americans who quit their jobs fell in April, while layoffs climbed, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's despite the fact job openings for the month increased, reaching 7.4 million in April.
Layoffs at large U.S. companies
Several major companies have revealed layoffs this year including Walmart, which announced in late May that it was reducing 1,500 employees from its global tech workforce in a bid to increase efficiency rapidly evolving technological advances.
On Thursday, Consumer goods retailer Procter & Gamble, the company behind many major household brands including Tide detergent, Bounty paper towels and Pampers diapers, announced this week that it would cut 7,000 employees from its workforce over the next two years, as it competes in an "increasingly challenging environment."
Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, Walt Disney Co., Microsoft and Facebook parent company Meta have also announced layoffs this year.
While job cuts by U.S.-based employees were down 12% in May from the previous month, according to new data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, they are up 47% from the same month last year.
"Tariffs, funding cuts, consumer spending and overall economic pessimism are putting intense pressure on companies' workforces," said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of the outplacement firm. Many companies have lowered their sales and profit expectations for 2025 in their recent earnings statements. And consumer confidence remains shaky, despite some signs of relief.
The Labor Department is expected to report Friday that employers added 130,000 jobs last month, down from 177,000 in April. The unemployment rate is expected to stay at a low 4.2%, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.
Sneak peek: Where is Jermain Charlo?
What to know about President Trump's travel ban on nationals from 12 countries
Hegseth orders Navy to rename USNS Harvey Milk, Jeffries calls it "a complete and total disgrace"
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
7 minutes ago
- The Hill
Trump stuns Wall Street, Washington with controversial BLS nominee
President Trump's pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is breaking the mold of his predecessors and causing alarm among economists of all stripes Commissioners of the BLS are usually academics or career civil servants with decades of experience in statistics and economics. But EJ Antoni, who Trump nominated to lead the agency after firing former BLS chief Erika McEntarfer on the heels of a disappointing jobs report earlier this month, has more bona fides as a pundit and conservative advocate than he does as a statistician. The choice of Antoni to lead a statistical division whose data is scrutinized by businesses and governments all over the world is getting major backlash from the economics profession and sparking concerns about the politicization of bedrock-level economic data. 'E.J. Antoni is completely unqualified to be BLS Commissioner,' Harvard University economist Jason Furman, who worked for the Obama administration, wrote on social media. 'He is an extreme partisan and does not have any relevant experience.' Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, echoed Furman's words. 'He's utterly unqualified and as partisan as it gets,' he told the Washington Post. Who is EJ Antoni? Antoni has been the chief economist of the Heritage Foundation's center on the federal budget for the past four months. The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think tank that produced the wide-ranging Project 2025 policy agenda. Project 2025 took aim at the 'permanent political class' in Washington, and many of its budget-cutting recommendations have been carried out by the Trump administration. He held two research fellowships at Heritage prior to his current position and two other fellowships at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group led by billionaire Steve Forbes. Antoni submitted his doctoral dissertation in 2020, in which he defends positions associated with 'supply-side economics,' a conservative policy doctrine that became popular in the 1980s. Besides stints as an adjunct at a community college and as an instructor at his alma mater of Northern Illinois University, he's held no other academic posts. By comparison, McEntarfer worked for 20 years as an economist with the Census Bureau. Her predecessor William Beach was the chief economist for the Senate Budget Committee, and his predecessor Erica Groshen spent 20 years as an economist at the New York Federal Reserve and referees for about a dozen academic journals. Antoni is a frequent guest on a number of conservative media outlets. While BLS makes it a point to produce — rather than interpret — economic data, Antoni has been hitting talking points on recent BLS releases in media appearances, a stark contrast with the agency's typical cut-and-dry communications. Discussing the dismal July jobs report, he emphasized job growth among native-born Americans on former Trump adviser Steven Bannon's internet podcast. 'There was some good news in the report, too, that we should definitely highlight,' he said. 'All of the net job growth over the last 12 months has gone to native-born Americans.' The Heritage Foundation did not respond to a request for an interview with Antoni. Backlash from economists Economists aren't mincing their words about Antoni's credentials. One economist at the University of Wisconsin refuted one of Antoni's recent papers, showing it contained basic statistical mistakes and finding that it wasn't possible to replicate its results — an academic kiss of death. Alan Cole, an economist with the conservative Tax Foundation think tank, described the errors in the paper as 'stunning.' 'Stunning errors in a tweet are bad, but worse to do it in long form, where there's more time and effort involved,' he wrote on social media. Conservative economists have also been blasting the firing of McEntarfer after the July jobs report showed that a meager 106,000 jobs have been added to the economy since May. Trump accused the agency — without any evidence — of producing 'rigged' data, which many economists have said is poppycock. 'The totally groundless firing of Dr. Erika McEntarfer … sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the statistical mission of the Bureau,' William Beach, a Trump appointee who preceded McEntarfer as head of the BLS, wrote online. Warnings to senators Antoni is expected to be easily confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate after he appears before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which will also need to approve his nomination. Antoni's critics are waging a long-shot effort to turn GOP members of the committee against the nominee ahead of his likely confirmation. Friends of the BLS, a group that advocates for the agency and that's chaired by Beach and his predecessor Erica Groshen, called out Antoni in a statement Wednesday, describing the debate about his nomination as 'contentious.' 'BLS now … faces the additional challenge of a contentious debate over the nominee for the next Commissioner, Dr. EJ Antoni,' they said. Groshen told The Hill they hope the nomination process will be 'very thorough.' 'The responsibility of the Senate HELP committee … is particularly important at this time,' she added. The Hill reached out to all Republican members of the committee about Antoni's qualifications, most of whom didn't respond. A representative for Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she wouldn't be commenting on the nomination prior to the hearing. What would politicized labor data look like? Antoni has already floated some massive changes to BLS data releases, including canceling regular monthly reports in favor of quarterly releases — a change that would alter the entire cadence of economic data output and affect nearly every private and public sector model of the U.S. economy. He told Fox News before his nomination that 'the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly jobs reports, but keep publishing more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data,' since BLS data is often subject to revision. Former BLS chiefs told The Hill they're keeping an eye on a regulatory standard known as OMB Directive No. 3, which governs the rules of BLS releases, for any sign that agency data could become politicized. 'Violations of that would be very unusual, and therefore indicative of something unusual underneath it,' Groshen said. Antoni has delivered some conflicting remarks on BLS data revisions, attributing them to 'incompetent' leadership under McEntarfer during his appearance on Bannon's podcast and then noting later that the problems pre-dated her time as agency commissioner. 'I think that's part of the reason why we continue to have all of these different data problems,' he said before adding that 'this is not a problem unique to the Trump administration.' Real problems with BLS data In fact, the downward revisions in the July jobs report that prompted Trump's firing of McEntarfer were due to the late reporting of educational employment figures by state and local governments, along with the more pronounced seasonal effects in that sector since teachers don't work in the summer. That's fairly typical for the agency, current and former employees of the BLS told The Hill. Political narratives aside, the BLS has seen a substantial drop in survey response rates in the aftermath of the pandemic, a decline that has made the data less reliable, but that has affected statistical agencies in a number of countries beyond the U.S. 'This is not a failure of the BLS … This is a phenomenon that is worldwide,' Erica Groshen told The Hill. 'This is a slow-moving train wreck,' she added, exhorting CEOs across the economy to make a priority of the surveys. 'There is no silver bullet. Believe me – people have been looking for it for a long time.' Economists have been lamenting the survey response rates for years. 'Like Orwellian newspeak, [the U.S. employment report] can often mean the reverse of what it says it means. The household and establishment surveys portray contrasting pictures of employment (and both have shocking response rates),' UBS economist Paul Donovan wrote earlier this month, having noted declines since 2023.
Business Upturn
2 hours ago
- Business Upturn
LINE LOSS ALERT: Lineage, Inc. Investors with Losses are Reminded of the September 30 Class Action Deadline – Contact BFA Law (NASDAQ:LINE)
NEW YORK, Aug. 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Leading securities law firm Bleichmar Fonti & Auld LLP announces that a lawsuit has been filed against Lineage, Inc. (NASDAQ: LINE) and certain of the Company's senior executives and directors for potential violations of the federal securities laws. If you invested in Lineage, you are encouraged to obtain additional information by visiting: Investors have until September 30, 2025, to ask the Court to be appointed to lead the case. The complaint asserts claims under Sections 11 and 15 of the Securities Act of 1933 on behalf of investors who purchased stock pursuant and/or traceable to Lineage's registration statement for its initial public offering held on or about July 25, 2024. The case is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and is captioned City of St. Clair Shores Police and Fire Retirement System v. Lineage, Inc., et al. , No. 2:25-cv-12383. Why Was Lineage Sued Under the Federal Securities Laws? Lineage is a cold storage focused real estate investment trust ('REIT'). Through its Global Warehousing Segment, Lineage owns and operates hundreds of temperature-controlled storage facilities used by companies to store food and other perishable products. As alleged, Lineage's IPO documents touted its 'consistent cold chain demand,' which purportedly provided Lineage 'with strong cash flows even during periods of broader economic stress.' The IPO documents also represented that the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic had 'accelerated trends that . . . have the potential to be growth engines for the industry in coming years.' In truth, Lineage was allegedly in the midst of a sustained downturn, as its customers destocked excess inventory built up during the COVID-19 pandemic, and also shifted to leaner inventories on a go-forward basis and as more cold-storage supply came on line. Events Following the IPO On February 26, 2025, Lineage announced its fiscal Q4 2024 financial results, revealing that customers had been 'unwinding' previously 'overbuil[t]' levels of inventory, returning to a 'more normal seasonal pattern' that was expected to 'continue moving forward.' Lineage conducted its IPO at $78 per share. Since the IPO, the price of Lineage stock has fallen dramatically, to lows near $40 per share—approximately half the IPO price. Click here for more information: What Can You Do? If you invested in Lineage you may have legal options and are encouraged to submit your information to the firm. All representation is on a contingency fee basis, there is no cost to you. Shareholders are not responsible for any court costs or expenses of litigation. The firm will seek court approval for any potential fees and expenses. Submit your information by visiting: Or contact:Ross Shikowitz [email protected] 212.789.3619
CNBC
3 hours ago
- CNBC
$20K pay cuts, lower titles, odd jobs: Workers are making big trade-offs to find meaningful work in today's job market
Seri Thompson has been on the job market for eight months. In that time, she's applied to over 180 jobs. Some of them are related to her new communications degree, like for social media or marketing jobs. Lately she's also applied to jobs unrelated to her field, like assistant or retail positions. In the meantime, she has a part-time internship with a local San Diego bakery and keeps a steady rotation of babysitting, pet-sitting, house-sitting and other odd jobs to pay her bills. Thompson, 22, graduated from college in December 2024 and is pragmatic about her job search, but still finds it frustratingly slow. "The perfect job doesn't exist," she tells CNBC Make It. She says her parents taught her to recognize that "once you get that first job, it's just a stepping stone for the rest of your career." "But it's hard being invested in something that you're not super interested in, or settling, for a job to pay your bills," she says. "I feel like with my generation, people want to be really invested in what they are doing and like the work that they are doing." While Thompson would like a meaningful job — which she defines as being with a supportive company that prizes employee well-being and development — she knows she may not get that right now. As it turns out, in today's challenging job market, finding meaningful work is becoming a luxury not everyone can afford. Most workers say it's important to them that they do meaningful work in their jobs, according to a July survey of over 1,200 American adults from UserTesting, the survey platform. Respondents defined meaningful work on a personal level, as in one that allows them balance and flexibility, followed by external factors like making a social or environmental impact and helping financial and economic concerns are becoming a bigger factor in what they prioritize in their jobs. A majority, 85%, of Americans say economic uncertainty has changed what they value most in a job, with the bulk of them now prioritizing stability, salary and flexibility. The current market is leading people to stay in unfulfilling jobs and avoid switching industries, according to survey data. And roughly 1 in 3 people said they would give up their dream job in exchange for one with more career stability. That's how Thompson is trying to approach the situation. "I'm just trying to keep my chin up and have grace for myself, knowing that it's like a really tough market right now," Thompson says. "I'm just in this waiting period." While a majority, 62%, of respondents from the UserTesting survey say they're somewhat or very optimistic about their job search, about 23% are pessimistic. Roughly 1 in 4 job-seekers say they're experiencing burnout or mental health issues on the search, and 16% say ageism is an obstacle. Bruce Bennett has applied to "well over 100" jobs and says the process has taken a mental toll. "I've gotten to the point where I don't even really read the job description," says Bennett, 62, an HR professional in San Francisco. "I only look for certain keywords, like, what is the job title? What is the [HR] platform that they're using?" He often sees online listings with over 100 applicants, at one point seeing a company post that they'd received over 1,000 submissions to one opening. "It's a crap shoot," Bennett says. "I know 99% of the time I'm going to get rejected." Bennett was laid off from his last job in October 2024 following a company selloff. The current job market feels similar to, if not worse, than the 2000s-era dot com bubble burst, he says. Bennett says he's never been the type of professional to take any job for the sake of more money or a flashier title. But he does want to work for a company that he feels makes a positive impact, and one that has a diverse executive team. It's challenging to hold onto those values in the current climate, though. "If I find something, great," he says. "If I don't, I'm basically looking into forced retirement." Bennett feels his age plays a role in moving through interviews, typically when the hiring team asks questions to gauge so-called culture fit, he says, or sees that his resume is two pages long (though he has experience he no longer includes to keep it shorter). Bennett believes having options in today's job market, let alone finding meaningful work, is a luxury. "I don't think you necessarily have a choice on being that picky," he says, noting that finding a well-aligned job often comes down to your network and what jobs are available. These days, he's found an outlet that brings him both joy and a little extra income: About nine years ago, Bennett began volunteering as a walking tour guide around San Francisco; more recently, he launched his own paid tour offerings. His husband's job supports their main living expenses, but Bennett's new venture helps "bring in some money and at least put[s] food on our table." "It's not a lot of money," he adds, "but it's something that at least makes me happy, helping my own mental state, and helps people around the city. I think that's far greater than anything I've ever done." Some workers are realizing that to hang onto what they value most in their jobs, they'll have to make concessions. Jill Di Benedetto, 42, is an art director in Miami. She's been on the job market for five months after her last contract ended, and another two she had lined up both cut their budgets and eliminated jobs before she started. She's applied to at least 70 jobs but stopped keeping track and describes her search experience as "volatile." "I'm pretty staunch on what I look for," Di Benedetto says, noting that doing meaningful work to her means working with a good team and reaching a customer and "changing someone's life." But she's had to come to terms that she'll likely earn a much lower salary in her next role. Di Benedetto says many of the openings she's fielded offer a salary at least $20,000 lower than her last one. Further, "I don't care what my title is," she says. "That has gone out the window. I just want to work with great people and be paid my worth." She stays grounded with lessons she's learned from former colleagues who've shaped how she views her career. "The people that I've gravitated towards the most have taught me that your career is not always linear," Di Benedetto says. "Sometimes it's all over the place, and it doesn't have to be what everyone else thinks it should be. It's a personal journey." Even in a tough market, some workers are opting to take their careers into their own hands and make big changes, knowing that the process could take some time. Kaleah Mcilwain, 28, is a digital editor in Philadelphia. She quit her last job in media eight months ago in search of something more aligned with the kind of impact she wants to make in her audience development work. It's her third time on the job market since graduating from college, and the most competition she's ever experienced. In a sea of qualified applicants, she's learned that "if you do not meet the requirements 100%, unfortunately, this is just not the job market to be applying to jobs where you're reaching," she says. She also thinks meaningful work is a luxury. She's seen peers take pay cuts or shift careers in order to pay the bills. But it's a luxury she's positioned herself to continue striving for. "I was fully aware that I may not find a job in three months, or however long, and I am very solidified around these are the things I want, so I'm not budging on them. And that is a luxury I can have, because I did choose to leave my own job." Mcilwain says she lives with a roommate and spent time building up her savings in order to quit without a job lined up. So far, Mcilwain says she's applied to three or four dozen roles and has been supplementing her income with freelance work. "I am committed to it just taking however long it takes at the moment," she says. Mcilwain says she's steadfast in her goals. "I've had to ask myself the question, 'Will I change my career paths?' And the answer is, 'No, I won't.' I'm going to just wait until I find the job that I want."
