Latest news with #joblessClaims
Wall Street Journal
28-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Germany's Jobless Numbers Tick Higher
Germany's unemployment numbers rose this month, as major firms intensify plans to rejig their workforces amid an uncertain economic environment. Seasonally adjusted jobless claims climbed by 34,000, accelerating from the 6,000 of April, according to data from Germany's Federal Employment Agency published Wednesday. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal expected a smaller increase of 14,000.
The Independent
22-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
US filings for jobless aid, a proxy for layoffs, inch down modestly last week as uncertainty lingers
The number of Americans filing unemployment claims last week fell slightly as businesses continue to retain employees despite growing economic uncertainty over U.S. trade policy. Applications for jobless benefits fell by 2,000 to 227,000 for the week ending May 17, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's pretty close to the 230,000 new applications analysts forecast. Weekly applications for jobless benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and have mostly bounced around a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 ravaged the economy and wiped out millions of jobs five years ago. The four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week ups and downs during more volatile stretches, rose by 1,000 to 231,500. The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of May 10 climbed by 36,000 to 1.9 million.
Associated Press
22-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
US filings for jobless aid, a proxy for layoffs, inch down modestly last week as uncertainty lingers
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans filing unemployment claims last week fell slightly as businesses continue to retain employees despite growing economic uncertainty over U.S. trade policy. Applications for jobless benefits fell by 2,000 to 227,000 for the week ending May 17, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's pretty close to the 230,000 new applications analysts forecast. Weekly applications for jobless benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and have mostly bounced around a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 ravaged the economy and wiped out millions of jobs five years ago. Even though President Donald Trump has paused or dialed down many of his tariff threats, concerns remain about a global economic slowdown that could upend the U.S. labor market, which has been a pillar of the American economy for years. The U.S. and China last week agreed to a 90-day pause in their trade war, giving financial markets a boost and at least temporarily relieving some of the anxiety over the impact of tariffs on the U.S. economy. Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve held its benchmark lending rate at 4.3% for the third straight meeting after cutting it three times at the end of last year. Fed chair Jerome Powell said the potential for both higher unemployment and inflation are elevated, an unusual combination that complicates the central bank's dual mandate of controlling prices and keeping unemployment low. Powell said that tariffs have dampened consumer and business sentiment and the government recently reported that the U.S. economy shrank at a 0.3% annual pace in the first quarter of 2025. Growth was slowed by a surge in imports as companies in the U.S. tried to bring in foreign goods before Trump's massive tariffs went into effect. Trump is attempting to reshape the global economy by dramatically increasing import taxes to rejuvenate the U.S. manufacturing sector. Trump has also promised to drastically downsize the federal government workforce, but many of those cuts are being challenged in the courts and Congress. It's not clear if or when the job cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency — or 'DOGE,' spearheaded by billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk — will surface in the weekly layoffs data. Despite showing some signs of weakening during the past year, the labor market remains robust, with plentiful jobs and relatively few layoffs. Earlier this month, the government reported that U.S. employers added a surprisingly strong 177,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate held at a historically healthy 4.2%. Many economists still anticipate that a negative impact from trade wars will materialize this year for American workers. Microsoft last week began laying off about 6,000 workers, nearly 3% of its workforce and its largest job cuts in more than two years. Other companies that have announced job cuts this year include Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines and Facebook parent company Meta. The Labor Department also reported Thursday that the four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week ups and downs during more volatile stretches, rose by 1,000 to 231,500. The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of May 10 climbed by 36,000 to 1.9 million.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Unemployment claims in South Dakota increased last week
Initial filings for unemployment benefits in South Dakota rose last week compared with the week prior, the U.S. Department of Labor said Thursday. New jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, increased to 159 in the week ending May 10, up from 157 the week before, the Labor Department said. U.S. unemployment claims remained the same at 229,000 last week on a seasonally adjusted basis. Massachusetts saw the largest percentage increase in weekly claims, with claims jumping by 82.3%. New Hampshire, meanwhile, saw the largest percentage drop in new claims, with claims dropping by 59.2%. The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from the U.S. Department of Labor's weekly unemployment insurance claims report. Our News Automation and AI team would like to hear from you. Take this survey and share your thoughts with us. This article originally appeared on Aberdeen News: Unemployment claims in South Dakota increased last week
Globe and Mail
15-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Eventful Pre-Market: PPI, Retail Sales, Jobless Claims and WMT Q1
Aside from last weekend's suspended reciprocal tariffs between the U.S. and China, and Tuesday's Consumer Price Index (CPI), this morning brings us the biggest bang for the buck in terms of grist for the economic mill. Just like every Thursday morning, this includes Weekly Jobless Claims. Not only that, but PPI, Retail Sales, Empire State and Philly Fed surveys, and key quarterly earnings reports have hit the tape this morning, as well. As if all that isn't enough, Fed Chair Jerome Powell is speaking at this hour, discussing the forthcoming update to its Framework Review. Here he fairly warns that the new review will reflect significant changes, as the Fed expects inflation to become more volatile in the months ahead. Powell also said the Fed is fully committed to its +2% inflation target… today. OK, so how about tomorrow? Pre-market futures were down before any of this information was released, and we're actually seeing an easing of levels in the red. The Dow was -185 points earlier but is now -150, the S&P 500 has improved from -31 points to -21, and the Nasdaq has moved from -144 points to -95 at this hour. PPI -0.5% Headline: Lowest in 5 Years You'd have to go back to the initial impact of the Covid era, in April of 2020, to find a lower Producer Price Index (PPI) headline than the -0.5% reported for last month. The previous month's negative post, however, was revised up to 0.0%. Not exactly a wash, but less impactful on average for April wholesale price numbers. Core PPI month over month swung tremendously lower, from +0.3% reported a month ago to -0.4% today. Year over year, PPI headline came in at the lowest level since September of last year: +2.4%, but off a 70 basis-point (bps) revision the prior month, from +2.7% to +3.4%. Core PPI year over year reached +3.1%, still higher than the other prints, but still down considerably from the big upward revision to +4.0% for March. Ex-food, energy and trade hit +2.9% this morning, 60 bps lower than the slightly upwardly revised +3.5% in the previous month. Look under the hood on this data a bit, and you'll see that the biggest contraction on wholesale prices comes from trimmed margins. This may suggest — might even suggest strongly — that producers are eating some of the tariff increases in prices themselves currently. Although, you'll see in the WMT earnings report below that not all the higher tariff costs will be eaten by the companies selling tariffed goods. Retail Sales In-Line with Estimates: +0.1% As expected, April Retail Sales came in much lower month over month, from an upward revision of +1.7% for March to +0.1% for April — in-line with estimates. Strip out expensive auto sales last month and we come in again at +0.1%, down from the upwardly revised +0.8% in the prior month. Ex-autos and gasoline, this number reaches +0.2%, way down from the +1.1% revision for March. The Control number, which gets fed up the economic food chain into different data accounts like PCE, came in negative today: -0.2%, from the revised +0.1% the previous month — the second-worst month of 2025 so far. Weekly Jobless Claims Revert Back to the Norm: 229K, 1.81 Million After a couple weeks of slight trepidation that Weekly Jobless Claims might be finally heading higher, we see levels firming once again beneath 230K on new claims, sub-1.9 million on longer-term. Headline Initial Jobless Claims were slightly above estimates at 229K, exactly where we were the previous week. Continuing Claims flowed up to 1.81 million from 1.87 million a week ago. This finely tuned metric on national employment levels remains well behaved. Empire State, Philly Fed Both Report Modestly Negative Also as expected, the May Empire State survey of productivity in New York State came in at -9.2, 20 bps below expectations and now the third-straight month in negative territory. This follows the unrevised -8.1 posted a month ago, and better than the -20 reported for the month of March. The Philly Fed, also a regional manufacturing survey, reached -4 points on its May headline this morning, an improvement over the -10 anticipated. This follows a slightly improved revision to -26 for the prior month. This is only the second-straight month with a negative headline, but has been down in four of the past seven months. Q1 Earnings at a Glance: WMT, BABA, DE Walmart WMT outperformed estimates for its Q1 this morning, with earnings of 61 cents per share outpacing expectations by 4 cents, while revenues narrowly eked out a beat to $165.61 billion in the quarter. The biggest of the big-box retailers did say price hikes are coming, however, due to tariffs on Chinese imports. For more on WMT's earnings, click here. (You can see the full Zacks Earnings Calendar here.) Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba BABA reported mixed results this morning, posting a big +17% beat on earnings to $1.73 per ADS on U.S. dollar-equivalent $32.58 billion, which was slightly below the $33.08 billion in the Zacks consensus. The company did express concerns about overall demand. Deere & Co. DE shares are up +5% in today's pre-market after surpassing estimates on both top and bottom lines this morning: earnings of $6.64 per share also amounted to a +17% earnings beat, with revenues of $11.17 billion outpacing expectations by +4.9%. Shares are now up more than +20% year to date. For more on DE's earnings, click here. Questions or comments about this article and/or author? Click here>> 5 Stocks Set to Double Each was handpicked by a Zacks expert as the #1 favorite stock to gain +100% or more in 2024. While not all picks can be winners, previous recommendations have soared +143.0%, +175.9%, +498.3% and +673.0%. Most of the stocks in this report are flying under Wall Street radar, which provides a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor. Today, See These 5 Potential Home Runs >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Walmart Inc. (WMT): Free Stock Analysis Report Deere & Company (DE): Free Stock Analysis Report Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA): Free Stock Analysis Report
