US applications for jobless benefits inch up last week to a still-low 200,000

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits inched up last week but U.S. layoffs remain historically low despite signs of a softening labor market.

U.S. filings for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 17 rose by 1,000 to 200,000, up from 199,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That's fewer than the 207,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet were expecting.

Applications for unemployment benefits are viewed as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

Earlier this month, the government reported that hiring remained sluggish in December, capping a year of weak employment gains that have frustrated job seekers even though layoffs and unemployment remained low.

Employers added just 50,000 jobs last month, nearly unchanged from a downwardly revised figure of 56,000 in November, the Labor Department said. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.4%, its first decline since June, from 4.5% in November, a figure also revised lower.

The Labor Department also recently reported that businesses posted far fewer jobs in November than the previous month, a sign that employers aren't yet ramping up hiring even as growth has picked up.

Businesses and government agencies posted 7.1 million open jobs at the end of November, down from 7.4 million in October. Layoffs also dropped as companies seem to be retaining workers even as they are reluctant to add staff, a trend economists refer to as ''low hire, low fire.''

In an attempt to stabilize a softening labor market, the Federal Reserve last month trimmed its benchmark lending rate by a quarter-point, its third straight cut. Fed officials meet again next week, with most analysts and traders expecting central bank officials to keep the benchmark lending rate where it is.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell said members of the committee are increasingly concerned that the job market is even weaker than it appears. Powell suggested that recent job figures could be revised lower by as much as 60,000, which would mean employers have actually been shedding an average of about 25,000 jobs a month since the spring, when the Trump administration rolled out its sweeping import taxes.

Companies that have recently announced job cuts include UPS, General Motors, Amazon and Verizon.

Thursday's report from the Labor Department also showed that the four-week average of jobless claims, which softens some of the week-to-week volatility, fell by 3,750 to 201,500.