Slightly more Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, but layoffs remain historically low. U.S. jobless claims filings rose by 2,000 to 223,000 for the week ending March 15, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s just less than the 224,000 new applications analysts forecast. We ekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs, and have remained mostly in a range between 200,000 and 250,000 for the past few years. The four-week average, which evens out some of the week-to-week swings, inched up by 750 to 227,000. It’s not clear when job cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will show up in the weekly layoffs report, though the Labor Department’s February jobs report showed that the federal government shed 10,000 jobs. That’s the most since June 2022. Economists don’t expect the federal workforce layoffs to have much of an impact until the March jobs report. Read the full story.    ...read more read less