US Layoffs at 57-Year Low: 197,000 Claims and a No-Hire Market Explained
U.S. layoffs are at a 57-year low. New jobless claims totaled 197,000, while continuing claims stood at 1.701 million.
Weekly initial claims, or new applications for unemployment benefits, fell by 1,000 to 197,000, according to data reported Oct. 1. Reuters Continuing claims, which count people still collecting benefits, dropped by 11,000 to 1.701 million, the lowest level since April 2023. Claimants have held below 200,000 for four straight weeks. Boston25 News That run leaves initial claims at the lowest level since 1969 on one industry tally, and unemployment below 5% approaching a record not seen since the mid-1960s. Yahoo Finance
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, reports from employers. The release published Sept. 29 put the August job openings rate at 4.3%, down from 4.4% in July. Reuters The openings rate is the share of positions that are unfilled. The report has had a low response rate, which widens confidence intervals, the range of uncertainty around the levels. The June figures provide a baseline. Openings were 4.4% in June, down from 4.5% in May, while hiring increased by 96,000 to 5.348 million and the hires rate, the share of workers added, rose to 3.4%.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Employment Situation report for September 2026 on Oct. 2. Total nonfarm payroll employment, a count of U.S. jobs outside farms, increased by 29,000. BLS The unemployment rate was 4.2% in September.
Health care accounted for more than half the net gain. Health care employment increased by 17,000 in September, against an average monthly gain of 33,000 over the prior 12 months. Ambulatory health care services added 13,000. Hospitals added 12,000. Nursing and residential care facilities lost 9,000. The Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment release followed on Sept. 30.
FRED publishes Layoffs and Discharges: Total Nonfarm (JTSLDL) covering December 2000 to August 2026. The longer BLS turnover history is discontinuous. Layoff rates and accession rates were included in the list of economic indicators for 22 years from 1959 until both series were discontinued in December 1981. Within that early history, the layoff rate was lowest in February 1973 at 0.5 percent and peaked at 4.8 in October 1974. For annual layoffs and discharges in the modern JOLTS era, only one industry reached a series low in the 2019 accounting, finance and insurance at 323,000.
The broader context here is a no-hire, no-fire equilibrium. Openings are drifting lower. Net payroll growth is thin. Claims and layoffs are historically low. Think of a bathtub where the faucet and drain are both barely dripping, so the water level hardly moves. That combination compresses unemployment dynamics into small net changes built on even smaller gross flows by historical standards.
In my view, the data argue for caution in reading low claims as cyclical strength. Low layoffs support continued employment and income, which matters for delinquency (missed loan payments) and spending baselines. They do not offset soft hiring. A 29,000 payroll print with a 4.2% unemployment rate and a 4.3% openings rate fits two stories: a tight market, and employers hoarding workers late in a slowdown. The JOLTS response-rate caveat reinforces that point. Levels are less reliable than direction, and direction is sideways to softer on demand while separations stay floored.
Looking at what this means for rate and credit desks, the split between quits, layoffs and hires is doing more work than the headline unemployment rate. Older JOLTS vintages showed layoffs down 163,000 to 1.687 million alongside resignations up 188,000 to 3.161 million, a reminder that quits and layoffs can diverge. If quits hold while openings fall, wage pressure can ease without a rise in involuntary job loss. If hiring stays at June-September levels, even a modest normalization in layoffs would move the unemployment rate quickly because the buffer from job-finding is thin.
