Tracking Unemployment Insurance Claims: Week of December 6, 2025

Since early spring, NAR has been tracking unemployment insurance claims data from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). DOL's data, which includes weekly counts of initial and continued benefit claims, is the most current source of labor market indicators available. 

In the week ending December 6, the number of actual initial claims (new jobless claims) totaled 313,140, an increase of 114,967 (or 58%) from the previous week. This level of claims is roughly in line with the total initial claims one year ago, which were 309,459.

In the week ending November 22, the level of continued claims (people still receiving unemployment benefits) was 1,689,569, a decrease of 92,675 from the previous week. Similar to initial claims, continued claims were about the same as last year's level, at 1,655,717. 

Since unemployment claims data is weekly, it fluctuates a lot and shows "noise." It's useful to look at year-over-year changes to assess the current labor market situation. Year over year, total initial claims decreased by 14.7%, while total continued claims decreased by only 1.9%. In addition, it's important to consider that continued claims data is lagging.

In the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia (DMV) area, initial claims increased in all three regions, while continued claims declined in all three. To estimate the long-term trends from job losses in the federal government, it's useful to look at the four-week average of unemployment claims in the DMV. According to the latest estimates, both initial and continued claims declined in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.