When Are the Next Jobless Claims Data?
The Department of Labor counts new claims for unemployment insurance filed each week. Because it is weekly, seasonally adjusted and nearly real-time, it is the standard pulse check between monthly employment reports; the four-week moving average is often quoted to smooth holiday noise.
By Joey van Diest, founder and editorUpdated
Next Jobless claims release
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Initial claims are published every Thursday at 8:30 am ET for the week ending the prior Saturday.
Last release
- Actual
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- Forecast
- -
- Prior
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Unit: thousands of claims (weekly). Ten years of history.
What this release moves
Claims are the highest-frequency official read on the US labor market, which makes them an early-warning series: sustained moves above the recent range have historically flagged labor-market turns before the monthly jobs report confirmed them. A single week rarely moves markets much, but a string of rising prints can reprice rate expectations, and prints during Fed blackout weeks get extra attention.
Frequently asked questions
- What time are jobless claims released?
- Every Thursday at 8:30 am Eastern Time, covering the week that ended the prior Saturday.
- What level of claims is considered worrying?
- There is no fixed threshold; what matters is the trend against the recent range. Sustained rises of several tens of thousands above the prevailing level, confirmed by the four-week average, have historically accompanied labor-market deterioration.
Method and limitations
Chart series: ICSA (initial claims, seasonally adjusted), plotted as the weekly level in thousands. Source: U.S. Employment and Training Administration via FRED.
The countdown reads the same feed as our economic calendar and converts the scheduled time to your timezone; when the feed window does not yet include the next date, the typical schedule is shown instead of a guess. History values are official published figures and can differ from initial prints where agencies revise data.
This product uses the FRED® API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Data sources
- FRED / U.S. government: ICSA — refreshed four times daily via our server cache
- Release timing from the Economicium economic calendar — countdown reflects the calendar feed; times shown in your local timezone
For general information and education only. This is not financial advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Trading and investing carry risk, including the risk of losing more than your initial outlay. Always verify figures against your broker or the original source before acting on them.
Spotted an error? Email[email protected]and it will be corrected. Maintained byJoey van Diest.