Unemployment claims to peak in 2022.

The number of Americans who apply Unemployment benefits It marked a high last week, hitting its highest level in nine months — the latest sign that the historically tight labor market is starting to cool.

Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department showed claims for the week ended Aug. 6 rose to 262,000 from 248,000 a week earlier. This is above 2019’s pre-pandemic average of 218,000 claims and marks the highest level since mid-November.

The number of Americans filing continuous claims, or continuously receiving unemployment benefits, rose slightly to 1.428 million for the week ended July 30, up 8,000 from the previous week’s revised level. A year ago, about 12.96 million Americans were receiving unemployment benefits.

For months, the labor market has been one of the few bright spots in the economy, with the July jobs report showing that the unemployment rate fell to 3.5% — the lowest level since February 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the broader U.S. economy. Employers, meanwhile, added an astounding 528,000 jobs, nearly double what economists had expected.

July inflation: Where are the price hikes hitting Americans the hardest?

A man presents his resume to an employer at the 25th annual Central Florida Career Council job fair in Central Florida. More than 80 companies were hiring for more than a thousand jobs. (Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/Lightrocket via Getty Images/Getty Images)

However, there are signs that the job market is starting to weaken, with several companies including Alphabet’s Google, Walmart, Apple, Meta and Microsoft announcing hiring or layoffs.

“An increasing risk to the market’s outlook is the upward trend in the number of individuals claiming unemployment benefits,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LLL Financial. “Initial claims and ongoing claims have been higher for the past four months and suggest that the labor market will weaken further in the middle of this year.”

Concerns are growing that the U.S. economy is on the brink of — or already is — headed for a recession. The Federal Reserve’s War on Inflation. It rose 8.5% in July – a sharp drop in June but still the biggest cut in decades as the central bank is raising interest rates at its fastest rate in decades as it races to cool consumer prices.

March 19, 2022 ‘Now Hiring’ signs appear in front of restaurants in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. (Stephanie Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

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Policy makers approved Another mega-sized, 75-basis-point hike – three times the usual rate – at their meeting in July and signaled they are “nowhere near” to ending this tightening cycle despite signs of a slowdown in the economy since then.