Initial Jobless Claims fell by 13,000 in the latest week, with 216,000 people filing for unemployment benefits for the first time. Continuing Claims also declined by 40,000, with 1.679 million people still receiving benefits after filing their initial claim. This latter number has been trending lower since topping 1.861 million in early April, reflecting a mix of people finding new jobs and benefits expiring.

What’s the bottom line? While the decline in Initial Claims appears to show a strong labor market, the measured week was the lead up to Labor Day weekend, which could have skewed this number as people often put off filing around holidays. Note that Continuing Claims lag a week, so they were unaffected by the holiday.

Also of note, there have been reports that large companies like Adidas, Adobe, IBM, and Salesforce are “quiet cutting” their employees. In other words, they are reassigning workers with lower pay and a lower title so they can trim costs. These reassignments have more than tripled over the past year and could partly explain why unemployment claims have remained low.