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The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week but layoffs remain in the historically healthy range of the past few years.
U.S. filings for jobless aid in the week ending August 1 rose by 1,000 to 199,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The previous week's figure was revised up by 1,000 to 198,000.
Weekly filings for unemployment benefits are considered representative of layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the U.S. job market.
Last week, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation metric, PCE, came in at 3.7% for June, still well above the U.S. central bank's 2% target. If inflation remains elevated, Fed officials say they are ready to raise interest rates to combat higher prices, raising costs for businesses and making them less likely to hire.
Last month, the government reported that employers pulled back on hiring in June, adding only 57,000 jobs. That's less than half the previous month's total and a sign that companies remain cautious about adding to their head counts. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.2% from 4.3% in May, though that decline is mostly because many out-of-work people gave up looking for jobs and were no longer counted as unemployed.