US applications for jobless benefits hold firm as layoffs remain low despite tariff uncertainty

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. applications for jobless benefits held steady last week as layoffs remain low despite uncertainty over how President Donald Trump’s tariffs will impact the economy.

The number of Americans applying for unemployment aid was unchanged at 229,000 for the week ending May 10, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s in line with 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 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 Trump has paused or rolled back 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.

Last week, the Federal Reserve held its benchmark lending rate at 4.3% for the third straight meeting after cutting it three straight times at the end of last year.

Fed chair Jerome Powell said the risks of both higher unemployment and inflation have risen, 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 but that data has not yet shown significant harm to the economy.

Also on Thursday, the government reported that inflation at the wholesale level fell unexpectedly in April for the first time in more than a year. However, new retail sales data showed that Americans pulled back their spending in April after stocking up on goods the month before to get ahead of expected price increases due to tariffs.

On Monday, the U.S. and China 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.

Trump is attempting to reshape the global economy by dramatically increasing import taxes to rejuvenate the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Contraction has already begun in the U.S., where the economy shrank at a 0.3% annual pace from January through March as Trump’s trade wars disrupted business. First-quarter 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 has also promised to drastically downsize the federal government workforce, which occupied much of the initial weeks of his second term.

It’s not clear 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. Many of the cuts are being challenged in the courts, though the federal government staff reductions are already being felt, even outside of the Washington, D.C. area.

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.

On Tuesday, Microsoft began laying off about 6,000 workers, nearly 3% of its workforce and its largest job cuts in more than two years as the company spends heavily on artificial intelligence.

Other companies that have announced job cuts this year include Workday, Dow, CNN, Starbucks, Southwest Airlines and Facebook parent company Meta.

The Labor Department's report Thursday said that the four-week average of claims, which softens some of the week-to-week fluctuations, rose by 3,250 to 230,500.

The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of May 3 rose by 9,000 to 1.88 million.