Every other labour number is weeks old. This one is days old.
| Date | Initial claims |
|---|---|
| 2021-01 | 827,800 |
| 2021-02 | 755,000 |
| 2021-03 | 669,250 |
| 2021-04 | 589,000 |
| 2021-05 | 469,200 |
| 2021-06 | 409,500 |
| 2021-07 | 370,000 |
| 2021-08 | 359,750 |
| 2021-09 | 354,750 |
| 2021-10 | 284,400 |
| 2021-11 | 236,500 |
| 2021-12 | 216,250 |
| 2022-01 | 239,200 |
| 2022-02 | 219,000 |
| 2022-03 | 215,000 |
| 2022-04 | 213,000 |
| 2022-05 | 209,750 |
| 2022-06 | 212,500 |
| 2022-07 | 218,200 |
| 2022-08 | 216,500 |
| 2022-09 | 197,500 |
| 2022-10 | 202,600 |
| 2022-11 | 210,750 |
| 2022-12 | 208,200 |
| 2023-01 | 204,500 |
| 2023-02 | 214,750 |
| 2023-03 | 229,000 |
| 2023-04 | 216,400 |
| 2023-05 | 226,000 |
| 2023-06 | 250,750 |
| 2023-07 | 235,200 |
| 2023-08 | 245,000 |
| 2023-09 | 218,600 |
| 2023-10 | 210,250 |
| 2023-11 | 218,000 |
| 2023-12 | 207,800 |
| 2024-01 | 211,500 |
| 2024-02 | 210,000 |
| 2024-03 | 215,200 |
| 2024-04 | 210,250 |
| 2024-05 | 222,000 |
| 2024-06 | 234,800 |
| 2024-07 | 237,250 |
| 2024-08 | 230,600 |
| 2024-09 | 224,500 |
| 2024-10 | 236,250 |
| 2024-11 | 219,200 |
| 2024-12 | 222,750 |
| 2025-01 | 215,000 |
| 2025-02 | 225,000 |
| 2025-03 | 223,000 |
| 2025-04 | 225,750 |
| 2025-05 | 231,800 |
| 2025-06 | 239,000 |
| 2025-07 | 221,500 |
| 2025-08 | 229,600 |
| 2025-09 | 234,000 |
| 2025-10 | 226,750 |
| 2025-11 | 222,400 |
| 2025-12 | 219,250 |
| 2026-01 | 211,800 |
| 2026-02 | 215,750 |
| 2026-03 | 208,000 |
| 2026-04 | 207,750 |
| 2026-05 | 211,600 |
| 2026-06 | 222,500 |
| 2026-07 | 203,250 |
| 2026-08 | 206,000 |
| 2026-09 | 206,000 |
→First claims for unemployment insurance have averaged 206,000 a week in September 2026. It is the only labour figure that arrives within days rather than weeks, which is why it turns before the unemployment rate does.
Source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis · as at 2026-09
Initial claims for unemployment insurance, filed with state agencies and collated by the Department of Labor. Plotted as the average of the weeks in each month, because a single week is mostly holidays, weather and auto-plant shutdowns. The chart starts in 2021 for a reason worth stating: in April 2020 more than six million people filed in a single week, thirty times the normal rate, and on an axis tall enough to reach that every year since is a flat line an inch off the floor. The figure is here in words instead. The store keeps the whole series either way.
Where this comes from
- Source: FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (official)
- Which in turn reads: US federal statistical agencies
- How current: As at 2026-09 · checked every 10 days
- What we hold: 69 observations, from 2021-01 to 2026-09
- Attribution: Series retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Every series read here is produced by a US government agency and is in the public domain; FRED's licensed third-party series are deliberately not read.