The largest home improvement retailers are holding up relatively well in a climate of falling home sales and builder confidence, with Home Depot this week reporting record sales and earnings in its latest fiscal quarter and rival Lowe’s getting a boost from contractors.

“Our performance reflects continued strength in demand for home-improvement projects,” Home Depot CEO Ted Decker said in a statement. The Atlanta-based operator of 2,300 stores reported sales rose 6.5% from a year earlier to $43.8 billion in its second quarter, with earnings increasing 7.6% to $5.2 billion.

Mooresville, North Carolina-based Lowe’s, with nearly 2,000 stores, reported second-quarter sales of $27.5 billion, about on par with $27.6 billion in the year-earlier period. Net income essentially matched the year-earlier number at just under $3 billion.

Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison said first-half results were “disproportionally impacted” by lower demand from its do-it-yourself customers, who comprise three-quarters of its customer base. That was partially offset by double-digit sales growth from construction professionals, a trend now in place for nine consecutive quarters.

“Despite continued macro uncertainty, we remain confident in the long-term strength of the home improvement market” and the company’s ability to gain market share, Ellison said in a statement.

Historically low unemployment rates and job cuts remain countervailing forces in an otherwise nerve-wracking economy that some analysts contend is on the verge of a recession. The Labor Department reported Thursday that initial claims for unemployment totaled 250,000 for the week ended Aug. 13, down 2,000 from the prior week.

The four-week moving average of 246,750 claims marked a drop of 2,750 from the previous week’s moving average. The total number of continued claims, tracked on a more delayed basis, was approximately 1.5 million for the week that ended July 30, an increase of nearly 2,700 from the prior week but well down from 11.8 million in the comparable year-earlier period.

The department reported earlier this month that the U.S. economy created more than a half-million jobs in July, putting the unemployment rate at a 50-year low of 3.5%. However, the annual consumer inflation rate remains around a 40-year high at 8.5%, despite efforts by the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates in a bid to bring that number down.

Sales of existing homes declined for the sixth consecutive month in July, adding to a streak of trends underscoring buyer uncertainty amid soaring housing prices, rising mortgage rates and other inflation.

The National Association of Realtors trade group reported Thursday that the approximately 4.8 million homes sold nationally was down 5.9% from June and marked a 20.2% decline from July 2021. July’s median sales price of $403,800 was down from June’s record $413,800 but still 10.8% higher than the year-earlier median price.

“The ongoing sales decline reflects the impact of the mortgage rate peak of 6% in early June,” chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement from the group. “Home sales may soon stabilize since mortgage rates have fallen near 5%, thereby giving an additional boost of purchasing power to home buyers.”

The group said the national inventory of unsold homes was approximately 1.3 million at the end of July, up 4.8% from June and unchanged from a year earlier. Unsold inventory amounts to a 3.3-month supply at the current pace of sales, an increase from 2.9 months in June and 2.6 months in July 2021.

Lingering hesitancy among buyers has created wider fallout, including dropping confidence among homebuilders and a spate of cancellations of completed sales, according to various trade groups and analysts.