04/10/2025—Because of the federal government shutdown, the Department of Labor isn’t releasing the standard jobless claims press release, although the bulk of state-level data continues to be made available on Thursday evenings. The table provided above represents our approximation of the national seasonally adjusted totals for the most recent week, drawn from the data that has been released so far, which at present encompasses all states aside from Arizona and Massachusetts.

For the week concluding October 4, we project that initial jobless claims will dip slightly to 220k from 224k, sustaining a low range comparable to those seen in previous years. Due to persistent seasonal influences, jobless claims generally decrease through the end of December.