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Americans filed the fewest new jobless claims in a month last week, and while the number of unemployed workers collecting relief payments has eased from recent highs, there is little indication of a break from the weak hiring environment that settled in over the course of President Donald Trump‘s first year back at the White House. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits for the week ended December 27 dropped unexpectedly by 16,000 to a seasonally adjusted 199,000, the lowest since the end of November, Labor Department data showed on Wednesday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims would rise to 220,000. The report was published a day early because of the New Year’s Day holiday. Claims have been volatile in recent weeks amid challenges in adjusting the data for seasonal fluctuations ahead of the holiday season. The labor market remains locked in what economists and policymakers describe as a “no hire, no fire” mode, and the final report of 2025 was largely emblematic of that. Though the economy remains resilient, with gross domestic product increasing at its fastest pace in two years in the third quarter, the labor market has almost stalled. Labor demand and supply have been impacted by Trump’s dramatic policy shifts since he began his second presidency in January, most notably his steep import tariffs and his aggressive immigration crackdown that has limited worker supply, economists say. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, fell by 47,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.866 million during the week ending December 20, the claims report showed. “The drop in initial unemployment claims to 199,000 in the week of Christmas was likely another seasonal-adjustment distortion,” John Ryding, chief economic adviser at Brean Capital, said. “Bigger picture, we have not seen a meaningful increase in layoffs as signaled by these data in 2025 with the average level of claims in the year at 226,100 compared to 223,000 in 2024.” Continuing claims have eased from recent highs Continuing claims had neared the 2 million mark in late October but have eased off some as the year wound down and a record-long federal government shutdown ended in mid-November. While off that recent peak, continuing claims are somewhat higher than they were at this time last year, and at a level that aligns with a survey from the Conference Board last week showing consumers’ perceptions of the labor market deteriorated this month to levels last seen in early 2021. Hiring has slowed substantially in 2025, averaging just 55,000 new jobs created a month through November, roughly a third of the pace in 2024, and the breadth of hiring has narrowed as employers awaited greater clarity on Trump’s policies and as they gauge their workforce needs against the rapid rollout of productivity-enhancing artificial intelligence tools. The slow hiring pace has brought job creation to near what economists estimate is the break-even rate that keeps the jobless rate from rising. The unemployment rate increased to a four-year high of 4.6% in November, though part of the rise was because of technical factors related to the 43-day government shutdown. A jobless rate tracker from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago suggests it remained unchanged in December at 4.6%. The Labor Department, which was unable to produce a jobless rate for October because of the shutdown, will publish employment figures for December on January 9. Still, the number of Americans on jobless benefits rolls as a share of the U.S. labor force is just 1.1% and has changed little over the course of this year even as the formal unemployment rate has climbed from 3.7% in January to November’s 4.6%. The lack of correlation in movement between the two data points is very unusual, and stands as further evidence for some economists of the reluctance among employers to cut headcount in an environment of still-tight labor supply. What does it mean for the Fed? The unusual attributes of the current job market are central to the debate underway at the Federal Reserve about whether to cut interest rates further to forestall further weakening of employment or to hold borrowing costs steady to keep pressure on inflation that remains above the Fed’s 2% target. The U.S. central bank this month cut its benchmark overnight interest rate by another 25 basis points to the 3.50% to 3.75% range, but signaled rates were unlikely to fall in the near term as policymakers await clarity on the direction of the labor market and inflation, which has drifted upward over the year thanks to pressure on goods prices from Trump’s tariffs. Minutes of the December 9-10 meeting released on Tuesday showed the depth of the divide among policymakers. Even some of those who supported the rate cut acknowledged “the decision was finely balanced or that they could have supported keeping the target range unchanged,” given the different risks facing the U.S. economy. For Fed officials, much hinges on what a blitz of data coming in the early weeks of 2026 reveals about the economy’s direction. Some of those policymakers who were either opposed or skeptical of the most recent cut “suggested that the arrival of a considerable amount of labor market and inflation data over the coming intermeeting period would be helpful on making judgments about whether a rate reduction was warranted,” the meeting minutes said. Dan Burns, Reuters
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Flu season is here and its shaping up to be a bad one. Cases of the flu are rising sharply across the country and thats when looking at data collected right before the holiday. In the U.S., the CDC estimates 7.5 million flu cases so far this season, with 81,000 hospitalizations and more than 3,000 deaths. So far this season eight children have died from flu-related causes according to the CDC, with five of those deaths reported this week. According to CDC data for the week ending on December 20, 32 states reported high or very high levels of illness with flu symptoms, up from 17 states reporting that level of flu activity the week prior. New York, New Jersey, South Carolina, Louisiana and Colorado are the states with the most extreme levels of flu-like illness, with many neighboring states also reporting very high levels. New York just broke a record by reporting its highest load of flu cases in a single week. Its the hospitalizations right now that are getting my attention, New York State health commissioner James McDonald told Albanys CBS6. The weekend of December 20 we reported over 3,600 people in the hospital from the flu in New York state. Why thats important is that was more than the peak of last year. What were seeing with this strain of flu is more contagious, more severe disease, McDonald said, adding that it isnt too late to get the flu vaccine, especially children and older adults. In New York, 40% of people hospitalized from the flu are older than 75, but infants are the second largest group requiring hospitalization. Part of what is making this season shape up to be a brutal one for the flu is the emergence of a new variant of the virus, known as subclade K (a subclade refers to a subgroup of a strain of a virus). Subclade K is a newer subtype of influenza A/H3N2 that emerged over the summer, complicating the protection from the flu vaccine, which was formulated using different reference strains of the virus from subclade J. Still, that situation isnt completely uncommon the vaccine and the dominant strain sometimes mismatch from year to year. While the term super flu is getting tossed around already, the vaccine formulation still likely provides some protection against the dominant subclade K form of the virus, as well as offering a buffer for the better-matched but less dominant strain. A perfect storm Seasonal illness spikes around the holidays each year as people travel to see loved ones and gather inside to celebrate. This year is no different, and the flu is joined by a lineup of other seasonal illnesses that includes COVID and norovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea. Other serious and extremely contagious illnesses like whooping cough and measles are also on the uptick in the U.S. this year, as waning vaccination rates take their toll on public health. Vaccine skepticism, once a fringe belief, now sits much closer toward the center of political beliefs in the U.S. Avowed vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr now shapes U.S. health policy from the very top, after building a career from promoting lucrative anti-vaccine causes. Another top Trump health official, Dr. Mehmet Oz, referred to the flu vaccine as controversial in an appearance on Newsmax this week, pointing viewers toward MAHA tips like taking zinc, eating well and coughing into the crook of your arm to protect against a flu infection. Oz called sleep the most important tool of all in protecting against a flu infection, failing to recommend the flu vaccine to the networks viewers. Flu is always a problem. Every year theres a flu vaccine. It doesnt always work very well. Thats why its been controversial of late, Oz said. But like many illnesses, the best news out there is if you can take care of yourself, so that when you do end up running into the flu, you can overwhelm it. An explosion of vaccine misinformation in recent years coupled with Covid-era fatigue has created the perfect storm for a public health crisis in the U.S., and were only just beginning to see the consequences.
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E-Commerce
Its the sort of thing you might not notice until it really matters, but the U.S. Postal Service recently changed how it defines the postmark on a piece of mailwarning that the postmark date is not a reliable indicator of when you actually mailed something. If youre the sort of person who waits until the last minute to send time-sensitive mail, that means youll need to stand in line at your local post office and request a manual postmark when dropping off your mail. While the way mail is postmarked hasnt undergone some major shift recently, the postal service set out earlier this year to clarify earlier what a postmark means and how the process works. By clarifying, the beleaguered agency delivered a reality check of sortsand warned that an issue many people didnt even realize was an issue could become more common under an initiative its implemented to optimize mail delivery, and particularly in rural areas, as part of its Delivering for America 10-year plan. Postmarks applied at originating processing facilities have never provided a perfectly reliable indicator of the date on which the Postal Service first accepted possession of a mailpiece, the agency said in a federal filing from last month. To the extent that customers currently have this view of the postmark, it does not reflect the realities of postal operations. Perhaps worse yet? Buying postage online or at a kiosk in the post office, doesnt overcome the postmark issue as that date merely shows when the postage was printed and not when it was actually in the hands of the USPS. CONCERNS ABOUT MAIL-IN BALLOTS When the agency first proposed clarifying the process back in August, there was a mandatory public comment period that elicited only 130 comments. But many of those comments focused on the implications for mail-in voting, which has become especially prevalent in the post-pandemic era. In the 2024 presidential election, mail-in voting accounted for 30.3% of the turnout, according to a survey conducted by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. That was down from 43% in the 2020 election. By warning of a likely timing gap between the date when you drop off mail and when its counted as received, the U.S. Postal Service has shifted some of the responsibility back on mailers. In the federal filing, it reiterated a common-sense measure that voters should mail their completed ballot at least one week before it must be received or else queue up at the post office for that manual postmark. OTHER CHANGES COMING IN 2026 But theres some (hopefully) welcomed news for people who dread a visit to the post office. In September, the agency announced that a modernization project will continue in 2026 that will see many lobbies undergo much-needed renovations. These projects, however, come at a cost. And shipping prices are going up once again, though not (yet) for stamps. After hiking shipping rates by as much as 7.6% in July, another big increase is coming on January 18. The cost to ship the lightest-weight package domestically will soon cost $7.76, a 7.8% increase from the current starting rates of $7.20.
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