US applications for jobless benefits jump by 22,000 to 231,000 last
week, the most in 2 months.
[February 06, 2026] By
MATT OTT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment
benefits jumped last week but remains in the same historically low range
of the past few years.
Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 31 rose by 22,000
to 231,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported
Thursday. That’s significantly more than the 211,000 new applications
that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast.
Applications for unemployment benefits are seen as representative of
U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the
job market.
A number of high-profile companies have announced job cuts in the past
year, including UPS, Amazon and Dow just last week.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post laid off one-third of its staff,
eliminating its sports section, several foreign bureaus and its books
coverage in a widespread purge at the storied newspaper owned by
billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. A private company, the Post did
not disclose how many people it has on staff, making it impossible to
estimate how many people were laid off.
Mounting layoff announcements in the past year, combined with the
government’s own sluggish labor market reports, has left Americans
increasingly pessimistic about the economy.
Last month, the government reported that hiring remained subdued in
December, capping a year of weak employment gains that have frustrated
job seekers even though layoffs and unemployment remained historically
low.
Employers added just 50,000 jobs last month, nearly unchanged from a
downwardly revised figure of 56,000 in November, according to the Labor
Department. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.4%, its first decline
since June.
January’s jobs report, which was scheduled for release Friday, has been
delayed due to the partial government shutdown earlier this week.
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 The U.S. economy gained just 584,000
jobs in 2025, an average of around 50,000 per month. That’s sharply
lower than that more than 2 million added in 2024, which amounts to
an average of nearly 170,000 per month.
The 2025 numbers represent the smallest annual job gains since the
COVID-19 pandemic decimated the job market in 2020. Outside of
recessions, it’s the slimmest annual increase since 2003.
The Labor Department on Thursday also reported that U.S. job
openings fell in December to the lowest level in more than five
years, another sign that the American labor market remains sluggish.
Vacancies fell to 6.5 million in December from 6.9 million in
November and the fewest since September 2020. Layoffs rose slightly.
The data has 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.
The Federal Reserve, in an attempt to shore up a softening labor
market, trimmed its benchmark lending rate by a quarter-point three
straight times at the end of last year. However, last week the U.S.
central bank left its benchmark lending rate unchanged in the midst
of a broadly improving economic outlook and what officials called a
stabilizing labor market.
Thursday’s report from the Labor Department also showed that the
four-week moving average of jobless claims, which balances out some
of the week-to-week gyrations, rose by 6,000 to 212,250.
The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the
previous week ending Jan. 24 grew by 25,000 to 1.84 million, the
government said.
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