U.S. jobless aid applications retreat to 231,000 after surging to nearly 4-year high a week earlier

The number of Americans applying for jobless aid last week retreated significantly after surging to a nearly four-year high a week earlier.

U.S. filings for unemployment benefits for the week ending Sept. 13 fell by 33,000 to 231,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s less than the 241,000 analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast.

The previous week, applications surged to 264,000, their highest level since the week of Oct. 23, 2021. Last week’s figure was revised up by 1,000.

Thursday’s unemployment benefits report showed that the four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, fell by 750 to 240,000.

The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the previous week of Sept. 6 fell by 7,000 to 1.92 million.

Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered representative of layoffs and have mostly settled in a historically low range between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic nearly four years ago.