【Epoch Times, October 17, 2025】Economists from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs estimated on Thursday (October 16) that the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits in the United States decreased last week, indicating that while the labor market is gradually cooling down, it still shows resilience.
The U.S. government shutdown has entered its third week, resulting in the suspension of several key economic data releases. In the past, the U.S. Department of Labor would publish the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits every Thursday, but now Wall Street can only make their own estimates to assess the labor market situation.
According to economists’ calculations, after adjusting for seasonal factors, the number of people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time in the week ending on October 11 (last Saturday) decreased to 217,000, a decrease of 18,000 from the previous week’s 235,000.
Although the federal government is shut down, the operations of state governments in the United States remain unaffected and they continue to upload unemployment statistics to the U.S. Department of Labor’s database. Data from Arizona, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Tennessee are the only ones not available.
Based on the above data, analysts from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs estimated the latest number of initial claims for unemployment benefits by applying seasonal adjustments using data released earlier by the U.S. Department of Labor.
Goldman Sachs stated in a memo, “The initial claims data for Tennessee, Massachusetts, Arizona, and Nevada did not show up in the Department of Labor’s database today. Our estimate assumes that their data is consistent with the last reported figures.”
“If we estimate based on the minimum and maximum application levels in these states this year, the range we obtain is from 211,000 to 225,000,” Goldman Sachs said.
Previously, the Department of Labor also followed a similar approach to estimate the situation in states where data is temporarily unavailable.
Abiel Reinhart, an economist at JPMorgan, commented, “The latest initial claims data for unemployment benefits looks quite good, indicating that the number of layoffs remains low.”
Ahead of the Fed’s policy meeting on October 28-29, the data on unemployment benefit claims has become a key indicator for officials to assess the health of the market.
This week, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said, “Current evidence suggests that both layoffs and hiring have remained low, with households’ perceptions of job opportunities and businesses’ views on hiring difficulties continuing to decline.”
Despite the government shutdown leading to thousands of federal contractors losing their jobs, the data has not shown a significant increase. The number of unemployment benefit claims has remained within the range before the shutdown.
Economists believe that the labor market is still stuck in a “no layoff, no hiring” state. The Fed’s Beige Book released on Wednesday referred to a “broad-based weakness” in demand for labor in recent weeks.
JPMorgan estimated that the number of continued claims for unemployment benefits (an indicator of recruitment activity) remained unchanged at 1.927 million after seasonal adjustment for the week ending on October 4. Goldman Sachs’ estimate was 1.917 million.
With the unemployment rate rising to 4.3% in August, the persistently high continued claims figures indicate no improvement in hiring conditions.