About 194,000 people filed initial jobless claims for the week ending Saturday, according to the Department of Labor’s Thursday report. The latest count was 6,000 below the previous week’s revised level.
The report put the four-week average at 197,750. Its latest total was nearly the lowest weekly count since the 1960s.
The release highlighted a labor market in which employers showed reluctance both to hire workers and to fire them. The September jobs report counted 29,000 new nonfarm payrolls. United Press Independent said the unemployment rate remained high even as jobless claims fell lower, rising to 4.2% in September.
The insured unemployment rate was 1.1% for the week ending Oct. 10 on a seasonally adjusted basis. The total was about 1.7 million people, up 25,000 from the preceding week.
Last week’s advance number of actual initial claims for state programs was an unadjusted 172,390, down 19,321, or about 10%. Analysts expected a decrease of 14,179 because of seasonal factors.
For the comparable week of 2025, state programs recorded 205,653 initial claims.
More than 5,000 former federal civilian employees filed continued claims for the week of Oct. 3. Newly discharged veterans filed 4,820 claims that week.
Ohio recorded the largest increase in initial jobless claims for the week of Oct. 10, rising by 3,918. Tennessee followed with an increase of 3,477.
Taken together, the figures described low layoffs alongside cautious hiring. The initial claims count fell even as the September unemployment rate rose to 4.2%, leaving the weekly filing figure and the broader unemployment measure pointing to different conditions within the labor market.