vs Last Week
+4K
Within normal weekly volatility.
Initial Jobless Claims
U.S. Weekly · Department of Labor
218K
+4K vs. last week
Past 12 monthsRange 200K – 250K
4-Week Avg215K
vs Last Year+13K
2020 Peak6,149K
Claims ticked up to 218K — slightly elevated but still in the "tight labor market" range. Recession-watchers look for sustained moves above 300K as the trigger signal.
Historical trend
Weekly DOL release.
Source: FRED · ICSA
The long view: since 2000
The 2020 COVID spike was 9× any prior weekly record.
Peak 6,149K · Apr 2020Trough 199K · 2021Today 218K
How today stacks up
vs Last Year
+13K
Slight rise but still benign.
5-Yr Avg
230K
Today below the 5-yr mean.
Recession Trigger
~300K
Sustained above 300K = stress.
Use this data
Tools for job security planning.
About Initial Jobless Claims
Initial jobless claims is the weekly count of Americans filing for unemployment insurance for the first time, published every Thursday by the Department of Labor. It's the closest thing to a real-time labor market pulse — claims data lag actual layoffs by just one week, vs the monthly Jobs Report which lags by 4–6 weeks. Today's 218,000 means about that many Americans lost their jobs and filed for benefits last week.
The Thursday market mover
Jobless claims are released every Thursday at 8:30 AM ET. Markets watch carefully — claims above 300K signal labor market stress; claims below 200K signal a tight labor market. The 4-week moving average is the most-watched derived metric (smooths weekly volatility). Today's 4-week average sits around 215K — well below the long-term average of 350K.
Reading this chart
The 2020 spike to 6.15 million in a single week was off the chart — by far the largest in U.S. history. The 1982 recession peaked at 695K weekly; the 2009 GFC peak was 665K. Modern recessions take claims well above 400K weekly. Today's 218K is benign by historical standards. The slight uptick from a year ago is concerning (it's the direction that matters more than the level), but absolute readings remain in "healthy labor market" territory.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
Anyone laid off (involuntary separation) who meets state-specific work-history requirements. People who quit voluntarily, are fired for cause, or are self-employed generally can't claim. The claims data is therefore a measure of involuntary unemployment from layoffs.
Weekly claims are noisy — holidays, weather, seasonal industries all cause one-week swings of 20-50K that don't reflect underlying trends. The 4-week moving average smooths this out. The single-week reading is less reliable than the 4-week trend.
The week ending April 4, 2020 — peak COVID lockdowns. About 6.15 million Americans filed for unemployment in that single week, roughly 9× the previous all-time weekly record. Within 6 weeks of the start of COVID lockdowns, about 40 million Americans had filed.
A separate weekly series that counts the total number of people receiving unemployment benefits (not just new filers). It runs about 5x the level of initial claims. Continuing claims rising while initial claims are flat = laid-off workers having trouble finding new jobs (recession-warning).
Methodology
Source
Pulled from FRED · ICSA and cached on the EvvyTools server.
Update schedule
Refreshed automatically by our cron whenever the upstream source publishes a new value. Historical values are not revised after publication.
How we compute
Display value is the raw published number, unrounded. Comparison stats use the closest available reference date. We never edit the underlying data.