April 17 (UPI) — The Labor Department said Thursday seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims for the week ending April 12 were 215,000, a decline of 9,000 from the previous week.

While the highest tariffs since the Great Depression of the 1930s drive worries of inflation and possible recession, the data pointed to resilience in the job market.

“The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 219,710 in the week ending April 12, an increase of 3,176 (or 1.5%) from the previous week,” the Department of Labor said in a statement.

The labor department said 1,885,000 workers were collecting unemployment insurance from states during the week of April 5. That’s an increase of 41,000 from the previous week.

Those continuing claims are at a post-COVID pandemic high.

“Overall, the claims report does not show any current evidence of layoffs materializing,” Jeffries LLC economist Thomas Simons said.

The labor department said the 4-week moving average of unemployment claims increased by 1,000 to 1,867,250.

Unadjusted jobless data shows 219,710 unemployment claims in the week ending April 12.

“There were 209,064 initial claims in the comparable week in 2024,” the Labor Department statement said.

The Thursday Labor Department report showed initial jobless claims highest in California, Tennessee, Oregon, Virginia and Florida.

The biggest declines in initial jobless claims were in Kentucky, Iowa, New York, Kansas and Arkansas.