Key Takeaways
- Workers filed 232,000 unemployment claims the week ending Oct. 18, the Department of Labor said.
- The number was unusual mainly because we weren’t supposed to see it: the department said the release, the first after the government shutdown ended, was a mistake.
A week in late October, 232,000 people filed for unemployment, an uptick from 219,000 in late September and a remarkable figure for the simple fact that we know what it is.
That’s according to the Department of Labor, which released the figure for unemployment claims made the week of Oct. 18 on a website tracking historical data Tuesday. It was the first new data posted about jobless claims since the end of the 43-day government shutdown last week.
The release took place at an unusual time: usually, the department releases that information on Thursdays. Tuesday’s release was a mistake, the department said, according to Bloomberg.
What This Means For The Economy
The jobless claims figure sheds light on economic trends that were blacked out during the government shutdown last month.
The number of jobless claims was in line with recent months and didn’t raise any red flags for economists about the health of the labor market.
Forecasters expect a separate, long-delayed employment report due to be released on Thursday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show that the economy added a modest number of jobs in September. Job growth has slowed dramatically since the summer due to uncertainty about tariffs and President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration, among other factors.
“The overall picture is one of a labor market that is deteriorating but not falling into recession,” Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research think tank, wrote in a commentary.
