The number of people asking for unemployment benefits fell a lot last week.

The Labor Department said this on Thursday.

The number dropped to 196,000.

This is the lowest since the middle of July.

It was 206,000 the week before.

The four-week average went down to 203,250.

This average makes the weekly changes smoother.

Economists thought there would be 207,500 claims.

They said this in a survey by the data company FactSet.

Jobless claims show how many people lose their jobs.

Economists watch them to see where the job market is going.

In the past year, claims mostly stayed low.

They were between 200,000 and 230,000 each week.

The American job market has stayed strong even with higher gas prices.

These prices have hurt businesses and buyers since the fighting with Iran began on Feb. 28.

Layoffs are low because businesses remember the worker shortages after pandemic lockdowns.

They do not want to lose their workers.

They are also hiring, but only a little by recent standards.

So far this year, employers added an average of 80,000 jobs a month.

This includes a surprising 162,000 in August.

That is better than a very bad 2025.

In that year, monthly job growth averaged 9,700.

High interest rates and President Donald Trump's changing trade policies made hiring hard that year.

Even so, the current pace is much lower than the 166,000 jobs a month added on average in 2023 and 2024.

It is also far below the 491,000 a month during the 2021-2022 hiring boom.

That boom came after COVID-19 lockdowns.