US applications for jobless benefits fall to 227,000 last week,
remaining at recent healthy levels
[February 13, 2026] By
MATT OTT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment
benefits fell last week, remaining within the historically healthy range
of the past few years.
Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Feb. 7 fell by 5,000 to
227,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
That’s basically in line with the 226,000 new applications that analysts
surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast.
Filings for unemployment benefits are viewed as representative of U.S.
layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job
market.
On Wednesday, the government reported that U.S. employers added a
surprisingly strong 130,000 jobs in January and the unemployment rate
fell to a still-low 4.3% from 4.4%. However, government revisions cut
2024-2025 U.S. payrolls by hundreds of thousands. That reduced the
number of jobs created last year to just 181,000, a third of the
previously reported 584,000 and the weakest since the pandemic year of
2020.
While weekly layoffs have remained in a historically low range mostly
between 200,000 and 250,000 for the past few years, a number of
high-profile companies have announced job cuts recently, including UPS,
Amazon, Dow and the Washington Post in recent weeks.
Mounting layoff announcements in the past year, combined with the
government’s own sluggish labor market reports, have left Americans
increasingly pessimistic about the economy.
The Labor Department also recently reported that job openings fell in
December to the lowest level in more than five years, another sign that
the American labor market remains sluggish, even though the economy is
registering solid growth.
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 Data over the past year has broadly
revealed a labor market in which hiring has clearly slowed, hobbled
by uncertainty raised by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the
lingering effects of the high interest rates the Fed engineered in
2022 and 2023 to tamp down a spike of pandemic-induced inflation.
Economists are conflicted about whether the stronger-than-expected
January job gains are a one-off or possibly the first sign of a
recovering labor market, which could lead the Fed to further delay
more cuts to its key interest rate.
Some Fed officials have specifically argued that last year’s weak
hiring shows that borrowing costs are weighing on growth and
discouraging companies from expanding. A sustained pickup in hiring
could undercut that theory.
Fed officials signaled in December that they expect to reduce their
key rate once more this year, while Wall Street investors expect two
reductions, according to futures pricing.
Thursday’s unemployment benefits report from the Labor Department
also showed that the four-week moving average of jobless claims,
which balances out some of the weekly volatility, rose by 7,000 to
219,500.
The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the
previous week ending Jan. 31 increased by 21,000 to 1.86 million,
the government said.
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