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Employers continue to hold onto workers even as hiring remains weak, sending weekly jobless claims to around their lowest levels in records that stretch back nearly six decades. Initial filings for unemployment insurance slipped to a seasonally adjusted 194,000 for the week ended Oct. 17, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That marked another leg lower in the low-fire trend, with the total just off the 189,000 reported for the week of July 18 that was the lowest since September 1969. Claims have averaged 212,000 over the past year, and the four-week moving average is down to 197,750. Those numbers come against an uncertain backdrop for the labor market. Nonfarm payrolls rose by just 29,000 in September and have averaged a gain of just 69,000 a month in 2026. The unemployment rate rose to 4.2%, an increase largely due to a sharp spike in labor force participation. Layoffs have remained modest, declining by 61,000 in August, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Sept. 29. Over the prior 12 months, the layoff rate measured as a share of the total workforce fell to 1%, down 0.2 percentage point during the period. Job openings were relatively flat during the period. "Despite extremely pessimistic views expressed in consumer confidence surveys regarding the economy overall, countless headlines describing job cuts from a variety of businesses, and the phantom job-stealing power of AI, the claims data suggests that labor market conditions are stable," Thomas Simons, chief U.S. economist at Jefferies, said in a client note. The data comes during the reference week that the BLS uses to calculate the payrolls growth number. The October jobs report will be released Nov. 6. Federal Reserve officials gather next week to issue their latest decision on interest rates. Policymakers in recent days have characterized the labor market as a source of general strength and focused more of their attention on the nettlesome inflation problem that has kept the pace of price increases well above the central bank's 2% target. Markets expect the Fed to hold off on a rate hike in October but then to institute another quarter percentage point increase in December. Correction: The October jobs report will be released Nov. 6. An earlier version misstated the month and date.
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