WASHINGTON – The latest figures indicate a slight increase in the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits last week, as companies continue to hold onto their workforce despite notable softening in the labor market over the past year.

According to the Labor Department’s report released on Thursday, the number of jobless claims for the week ending March 21 climbed by 5,000, reaching a total of 210,000. This is up from the previous count of 205,000, aligning with forecasts from analysts polled by FactSet, who anticipated the number to hit 210,000.

The number of unemployment benefit applications serves as a key indicator of layoffs across the United States, offering a near real-time snapshot of the job market’s vitality.

Despite the weekly claims consistently falling within the healthy range of 200,000 to 250,000 over the past few years, some major corporations have recently announced job cuts. Notable among these are Morgan Stanley, Block, UPS, and Amazon.

Earlier this month, the Labor Department disclosed an unexpected reduction of 92,000 jobs in February, highlighting ongoing challenges within the labor market. Additionally, revisions have removed 69,000 positions from December and January payroll figures, resulting in a slight increase in the unemployment rate to 4.4%.

The unexpectedly weak employment data for February adds to the existing economic uncertainties, especially in light of the ongoing conflict with Iran. This situation has led to a more than 40% surge in oil prices, impacting both businesses and consumers with rising costs.

This comes at a time when inflation was already relatively high in the U.S.

The Commerce Department recently reported that the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge rose 2.8% in January compared with a year earlier. That’s above the Fed’s 2% target and the latest sign that prices were persistently elevated even before the Iran war caused spikes in oil and gas costs.

That persistent inflation, combined with the uncertainties brought on by the conflict in the Middle East, led the Fed to leave its benchmark lending rate alone at its last meeting. Central bank officials voted to raise the rate three times to close 2025 out of concern for a weakening job market.

The U.S. job market appears stuck in what economists call a “low-hire, low-fire” state that has kept the unemployment rate historically low, but has left those out of work struggling to find a new job.

Data over the past year has broadly revealed a labor market in which hiring has clearly slowed, hobbled by uncertainty stoked by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the lingering effects of the high interest rates the Federal Reserve engineered in 2022 and 2023 to tamp down a spike of pandemic-induced inflation.

The Labor Department’s report Thursday showed that the four-week moving average of jobless claims, which evens out some of the weekly swings, dipped by 250 to 210,500.

The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending March 14 fell by 32,000 to 1.82 million, the government said.