Freely Downloadable Data Sets Updated Daily

Initial unemployment claims (not seasonally adjusted) - United States - Department of Labor - Weekly

This series is part of the dataset: Unemployment claims

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Latest updates. In the United States, seasonally unadjusted jobless claims were 190,370 on 14 March 2026, compared to 207,252 on 7 March. This constitutes a decrease of 8.15 percent.

Sample. The weekly time series presented in the plot has 3,089 records overall. The time span covered by the series goes from January 1967 to March 2026.

History. Have a look at a few summary statistics we calculated on the entire sample: claims hit a trough of 133,000 on 6 September 1969; they reached a maximum of 6,161,268 on 4 April 2020; they had a mean of 359,942.

Latest values

Date Value - Number of persons
2026-02-28 214269.0
2026-03-07 207252.0
2026-03-14 190370.0

Heads-up. One of the advantages of our web site is that we provide complete metadata. Find it below to learn more about the attributes of the time series that you use in your research.

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Series Metadata

Field Value
Description Initial unemployment claims (jobless claims)
Country United States
Economic concept Flow
Data type Quantity
Deflation method Not applicable
Seasonally adjusted No
Rescaling No
Frequency Weekly
Unit Number of persons
Source U.S. Department of Labor - Employment and Training Administration
Source type Federal Administration
Data licence Unknown
Measure type Level