WASHINGTON — The number of Americans seeking jobless benefits rose modestly last week, suggesting that employers are still retaining workers even as the economy has showed signs of slowing.

Applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending Aug. 30 rose by 8,000 to 237,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s more than the 231,000 new applications economists were expecting.

The four-week average of claims, which softens some of the week-to-week volatility, rose by 2,500 to 231,000.

The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the previous week of Aug. 23 fell by 4,000 to 1.94 million.

Weekly applications for jobless benefits are seen as a proxy for layoffs and have mostly settled in a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic nearly four years ago.