The increase in claims brought the total up to 202,000 applications for jobless aid in the week, the Associated Press reported. In the previous week, the 188,000 claims marked the lowest since 1969.

While first-time applications for unemployment aid generally track the rate of layoffs, the weekly increase in the seven-day period that ended on March 26 did not jeopardize the historic lows in layoffs.

In the week that ended on March 19, there were 1,307,000 people collecting unemployment aid. That was a decrease of 35,000 from the revised level in the previous week and became the lowest figure since December of 1969, when the number of people collecting aid sat at 1,304,000, according to the Labor Department’s report.

The prior week’s 1,342,000 people who were collecting jobless aid, revised down from the initially reported figure of 1,350,000, had been the lowest level in more than 50 years.

More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the historic lows in layoffs, despite the increase in first-time claims, is another sign of recovery for the U.S. economy. President Joe Biden lauded last week’s unemployment numbers in a statement that said Americans are “getting back to work at a historic pace.”

He added that the “historic progress” is not accidental, but the “result of an economic strategy to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out.”

As of Thursday morning, Biden had not commented on the Labor Department’s report. Newsweek has reached out to the White House for comment but did not hear back by publication time.

The Labor Department’s report on the promising layoff level went hand in hand with a separate Commerce Department report that highlighted ongoing rises in U.S. prices.

Spurred by price hikes for food, gas and other items, an inflation gauge watched by the Federal Reserve increased 6.4 percent in February compared to a year before. It was the biggest yearly increase since January of 1982.

Without factoring in food and energy prices, inflation was up 5.4 percent in February compared to a year earlier, according to the Commerce Department report.

Update 3/31/22, 10:13 a.m. ET: This story was updated with additional information and background.