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Overall, 1.8 million Americans were collecting unemployment benefits the week that ended March 16, up 24,000 from the week before.

Applications for unemployment benefits are viewed as a proxy for layoffs and a sign of where the job market is headed. Despite job cuts at Stellantis Electronic Arts, Unilever and elsewhere, overall layoffs remain below pre-pandemic levels. The has come in under 4% for 25 straight months, longest such streak since the 1960s.

Economists expect some tightening in the jobs market this year given the surprising growth of the U.S. economy last year and in 2024.

The U.S. economy from October through December, the government said Thursday in an upgrade from its previous estimate. The government had previously estimated that the economy expanded at a 3.2% rate last quarter.

The Commerce Department’s revised measure of the nation’s gross domestic product — the total output of goods and services — confirmed that the economy decelerated from its sizzling 4.9% rate of expansion in the July-September quarter.

“We may see initial claims drift a bit higher as the economy slows this year, but we don’t expect a major spike because, while we expect the pace of job growth to slow, we do not anticipate large-scale layoffs,� wrote Nancy Vanden Houten, the lead U.S. Economist at Oxford Economics.