Applicants reach for registration forms to attend a combined Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Harlem Week job and career fair on Thursday at Columbia University in New York. The Labor Department says Americans who applied for unemployment benefits over the past month has fallen to its lowest level in almost six years, dropped 6,250 to 335,500.WASHINGTON – Americans who have a job may take comfort in knowing that companies are laying off fewer people than at any time since before the Great Recession.
The government said Thursday that weekly applications for U.S. unemployment benefits have averaged 335,500 over the past month. That’s the lowest level since November 2007, which was one month before the recession began.
But while most companies have stopped cutting jobs, many remain reluctant to hire. That’s bad news for the roughly 11.5 million Americans who are unemployed and a major reason the unemployment rate is still so high four years after the recession officially ended.
“We have seen a disconnect between the level of hiring and firing,” said Bricklin Dwyer, an economist at BNP Paribas.
Unemployment applications are a proxy for layoffs. At the depths of the recession, in March 2009, weekly claims surged to 670,000. They have fallen steadily ever since and are now half that level.